The Future of Open Finance

By Jacob Parker, CEO at Fiskil

The future of open finance

Whether you’re working for a fintech, bank, a data focused business or a company looking for new ventures, open finance matters. It matters to your current product offerings, the ones you’re looking to scale and the services that you haven’t begun to design.

What is open finance?

Open Finance is an evolution from the Open Banking foundations that covers all financial data, not just your banking accounts. The initiative creates in depth data sharing across a broad range of financial products and services beyond banking, such as: utilities, telecom, insurance, superannuation, investments, credit information and more. Access and control over these datasets are critical to a person’s life, though historically this has not been an option due to a lack of openness and standardised technical specifications. Australia is poised to be the global leader within Open Finance with their new consumer framework, the Consumer Data Right (CDR) and its commitment to building a digital economy.

So, why does it matter?

Despite being in its infancy, Open Banking has undoubtedly been a success in the EU and the US, and it is beginning to make waves in other countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Singapore. Various use cases continue to arise out of Open Banking, showing that there is still much more that can be done with Open API access to consumer and business data.

The real value of data does not come from a single data set but from a combination of different data sets.

The true value of an open financial system and the potential use cases that will arise from the access to financial data remains unknown. What we do know is that money is fungible and financial choices are interdependent. The access to new datasets will release the shackles for innovators to develop consumer driven products that are more competitive, effective and affordable. Utilities, telco, insurance and key public data such as: tax are all pieces of an individual’s finances. Access and ownership of this data is critical for complete control of an individual or businesses finances.

We’re on the forefront of the Open Finance revolution. Providers like Fiskil offer APIs that enable enterprise, businesses and founders to create completely new solutions by leveraging clean and standardised financial data.