Data - the ongoing battleground in Financial Services

The much anticipated launch of Open Banking in January of this year in the UK has not led to the wave of disruption that was originally predicted. In truth it was more a trickle. However, there are signs that things are changing as new entrants leverage the rich sources of transactional data that Open Banking offers new services and propositions.

Cleo is one such example of this – it aggregates an individual's accounts and then applies machine learning and AI to provide insight, all delivered through a conversational interface on Facebook Messenger.

From a user perspective, this removes a lot of friction from the status quo – no longer do they need to log into each account and manually analyse their spending. The whole process is automated with personalised insights and recommendations based on users specific spending habits.

This level of customer intimacy and personalisation can only be achieved through data – this is what powers the AI capability and enables innovative new services to be created.

However, with ongoing concerns about data privacy and security, the jury is still out on whether consumers are willing to agree to let third parties to access and share this goldmine of information. Only time will tell on this, but it’s clear that the organisations who have a data strategy and recognise the value of data, analytics and AI at all levels of the organisation will be the winners, as these capabilities will be at the heart of the digital transformation for the foreseeable future.