CFIT’s Open Finance Coalition publishes progress update

British consumers and small businesses are “struggling” to organise their finances due to “scattered” products and “hard to access” financial information, the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology’s (CFIT’s) Open Finance Coalition has found.

In its progress update published today (15 December), however, the Open Finance Coalition said it has identified, ranked and prioritised additional datasets that could be made available to financial institutions immediately, to improve consumers’ and SMEs’ access to finance.

The Coalition stated: “A vast quantity of additional financial and non-financial data is inaccessible or underutilised in more than 30 additional datasets.”

CFIT launched its initial coalition focused on Open Finance in July this year, which was tasked with demonstrating “the power of leveraging financial data to deliver better financial outcomes to consumers and SMEs” in the UK.

CFIT chief executive officer Ezechi Britton

Six months in, the Open Finance Coalition has set out several challenges and opportunities, one of which is that a lack of data sharing impacts financial outcomes for consumers and SMEs.

Another of its “key coalition takeaways” is that when unlocking these datasets, customer consent must be “at the heart of the experience”.

The coalition also confirmed it is building several proofs of concept with its coalition partners to demonstrate how the industry can design new products and services using Open Finance.

Representatives from Experian, HSBC, IBM, iwoca, KPMG, Lloyds Banking Group, Mastercard, Monzo and Revolut are among those taking part in the coalition.

Ezechi Britton, chief executive officer of CFIT, said: “We are proud to have published our Progress Update for CFIT’s inaugural Open Finance Coalition, capturing what our group of over 50 industry experts has so far discovered and accomplished together.

“In February 2024, CFIT’s Final Report will build on these initial findings and set out a strategy for the UK to lead the way in delivering Open Finance.”

The Open Finance Coalition’s Blueprint is set to include a plan for the UK to deliver Open Finance by 2027 and a “staged approach” for making available the necessary datasets, when it is published in early 2024.