From Open Banking to meaningful personalisation: Why access to data isn’t the hard part

By Craig Wills, founder and managing director of Hi Mum! Said Dad

In Canada, Consumer-Driven Banking has been long in the making and is now finally moving into delivery. With Open Banking Expo Canada 2026 right round the corner, we’re excited that the conversation is shifting from frameworks and readiness to execution.

At Hi Mum! Said Dad, we’ve been leading our clients through the Open Banking rollout in the UK and across Europe since 2018. One thing that became clear early on is that data access is an enabler, not an outcome.

In Canada, as we’ve seen from our experience in the UK, the value of Open Banking will be defined by the experiences it unlocks, and the organisations that move ahead will be those who turn that access into genuinely personalised financial guidance.

This is exciting for Canada as it steps into the next phase, and achieving that requires more than infrastructure, it requires rethinking strategy, design and execution, with customers at the heart of every journey.

The experience layer is where value is created

There’s a simple truth we’ve seen play out repeatedly across financial services globally: customers don’t care about APIs, they care about whether their everyday financial lives feel clearer, easier and more secure.

When we partnered with Snoop’s founding team to design and build their multi-award-winning Open Banking app from the ground up, one insight quickly became central to every decision we made. Customers were willing to connect their bank accounts and engage when the value exchange was clear and immediate.

If the insight helped them spot rising bills, avoid unnecessary charges, or find a better deal on everyday expenses, the benefit felt tangible and the data connection made sense. Where the value felt abstract or overly complex, hesitation increased.

That behavioural insight is invaluable, as it tells us that adoption doesn’t hinge on how sophisticated the infrastructure is, but on whether the experience solves something real.

In Canada, as conversations around financial health continue to grow, Open Banking presents an opportunity to democratise financial advice, not just aggregate accounts. Data access creates possibility, experience creates impact.

From potential to practical impact

So what does this mean in practice? Success begins with identifying customers’ emotional pain points, such as budgeting, saving, managing debt, or planning ahead, and then working backwards to understand where Open Banking data can be used to create an experience which reduces friction or anxiety.

Progress also doesn’t require perfection, banks don’t need a fully mature ecosystem to begin learning. Small, testable experiences with real users tend to surface far more insight than months of internal alignment.

And crucially, personalisation isn’t a single screen or feature, it’s about delivering relevant insights across moments and channels, so value is connected, purposeful and continuous.

The next phase for Canada

From our experience supporting financial services organisations through similar transitions, the most successful teams are those that treat personalisation as a capability, not a campaign. They start small, test in live environments, and build confidence internally as quickly as they build value externally.

Canada’s next phase isn’t about proving that data can move, it’s about proving that it can matter. The institutions that embed that mindset early won’t just adapt to Consumer-Driven Banking, they’ll shape how customers experience it.

Hi Mum! Said Dad is an Event Partner of Open Banking Expo Canada 2026. Visit their booth G4 at the Expo on March 5, at the MTCC in Toronto. Click here to check out the agenda and register to attend.