Women in Open Banking ANZ shines a spotlight on progress beyond policy

On Thursday, 7 May 2026, 100 guests gathered in the Barangaroo offices of Baker McKenzie in Sydney to participate in Women in Open Banking ANZ’s third annual flagship event. The evening was co-hosted by Baker McKenzie with Mastercard.

The theme for this year’s event was “progress beyond policy” and it was designed to underscore how we have progressed beyond building the system; we are now deriving value from it.

The agenda started with a welcome from Baker McKenzie Australian managing partner Anne-Marie Allgrove, followed by a short address by Dr Scott Farrell, chair of the Data Standards Body and ‘godfather’ of the Consumer Data Right (CDR), who shared this year’s updated ‘pro surfing’ analogy.

Then there was a highly entertaining presentation by economist Katrina Ell from the Mastercard Economics Institute, a panel discussion, a live showcase by Mastercard solutions engineer Victoria Li of an Open Banking integration being created with the help of a model context protocol and agentic AI, and finally a recap and words of thanks from Brenton Charnley, head of Open Finance for Mastercard ANZ and co-founder of Open Finance ANZ.

The evening’s highlight was the panel discussion led by Baker McKenzie special counsel Simone Blackadder in conversation with expert guests Courtney Sloane, head of government relations ANZ at MYOB, Melanie Cochrane, group managing director ANZ at Equifax, and Marina Berberic, regulatory affairs counsel at Mastercard.

Sloane spoke about the Solo by MYOB product which is designed for Australia’s 1.5 million sole traders.

MYOB has used Solo as a successful testing ground to prove Open Banking can land for small businesses. Customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Now MYOB is moving to connect Open Banking more widely in its other products.

Small business case studies

Sloane also spoke to the question of what really delivers genuine commercial value for small businesses. She answered this by reference to two customer case studies.

One customer was a bookkeeper who has been able to take on more clients and no longer needs to manually enter data from a physical bank statement. The other customer ran six fast food franchises. He found his financial administration time went down by 60%, because he did not need to manually key in transaction data.

“Those kinds of savings really ripple out and show the economic multiplier that is possible,” Sloane said.

Cochrane spoke about the ways in which Open Banking is delivering better quality data to enable financial inclusion and how CDR data has changed lenders’ ability to assess risk while improving fair access to credit.

She said Open Banking gives lenders the transparency they need to assess affordability by reference to income and expenses.

“Lenders want to be able to say ‘yes’ to more,” Cochrane said, before elaborating on some of the challenges for the 2.5 million Australians who have a “thin credit file” and where there may be additional datasets that can help.

“The harmonisation of regimes is really important to get more adoption,” Cochrane said.

Cochrane also spoke to Equifax’s experience in the federal government’s rental pilot, partnering with Mastercard, Lexis Nexis and Reapit.

Cochrane said the pilot had highlighted where the different federal and state regimes don’t work well together. While the collaborators built a solution that worked, it was “clunky”.

As an optimist on this topic, Cochrane said: “We proved we can do it. Now we just have to work on how we scale it.”

Compliance ‘in practice’

Berberic talked about non-bank lenders as the latest new entrants coming into CDR from 2026 onwards and the important role of compliance in the regulated regime.

“Compliance in practice, rather than compliance on paper, requires leaning in on operationalising the rules,” Berberic said, describing a “pipeline” of workflows including policies, compliance artefacts and audits.

She also pointed to the importance of setting up a compliance framework that can scale as a business grows.

“Where we see real progress is our ability to standardise processes and test them in the real world,” Berberic said.

Berberic also spoke to the ways in which CDR can help to reduce fraud and scams.

“CDR by design has some really powerful protections,” she concluded.

Women in Open Banking ANZ is a satellite initiative of Open Finance ANZ.

Main image L-R: Melanie Cochrane, group managing director ANZ at Equifax, Courtney Sloane, head of government relations ANZ at MYOB, Baker McKenzie special counsel Simone Blackadder, Marina Berberic, regulatory affairs counsel at Mastercard, and Mastercard solutions engineer Victoria Li.

Jennifer Harrison is director, startups and scaleups at Reputation Edge