Open Banking promises tailored services for the masses

Neil Tomlinson is spot-on when he forecasts that Open Banking is likely to lead to a more personalised banking experience for millions of consumers. 

Indeed, Open Banking is largely a misnomer because there is no reason why individuals should not be able to see all their financial products - deposits, loans, mortgages, investments, pensions and insurance - in the one place. 

Individuals will be able to compare and contrast current and brokerage accounts from different providers, insurance prices and terms, pension charges and reward schemes from different retailers. 

Armed with this live-real time data, supplemented by forecasting tools that could model different scenarios, individuals will be able to manage their money, budget and plan for the future better. 

In future, it should be possible to customise the user interface. 

The key question is who will own that user interface? I also share Neil’s view that incumbents that embrace the opportunities from Open Banking are in a great position. They own the customer and enjoy a high degree of customer trust to look after customers' money and data, and to execute payments efficiently. 

However, as explored in our report, Open Banking – How to flourish in an uncertain future, there are a number of challenges that incumbents need to overcome to win in this new world. For Open Banking, they need a ‘fail fast and learn quickly’ mentality. They should also implement agile ways of working that encourage experimentation to take full advantage of their current position of strength.