Open Banking

[UncleEbenezer]

Open Banking got a mention on today's Money Box (Radio 4), in the context of mortgages.

The story there is that you let your prospective lender view your bank account as an alternative to longwinded affordability checks. They reckoned it'll be helpful to the mortgage application process to be able to present them with real-life data.

[Slarti]

This is all to do with some EU regs coming in next year.

They are (should) not be asking you to give anything to anybody, other than permission to them to pass on details like what type of accounts/insurances/cards you have and at what rates together with your contact details, so that the TTP can send you even more junk mail offering their far superior service.

See here for better worded information https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/1 ... n_banking/

Oh, and I won't be accepting my details being shared.

Slarti

[swill453]

They are (should) not be asking you to give anything to anybody, other than permission to them to pass on details like what type of accounts/insurances/cards you have and at what rates together with your contact details, so that the TTP can send you even more junk mail offering their far superior service

That's only the first phase. By 2019 "a fully functioning open data market in the UK banking sector"could happen.

Third parties would be able to (with your permission) do anything you can do with you online bank.

For example, they could create an app that would allow you to manage all your accounts in many banks from a single place.

Scott.

[PeterGray]

There is no compulsion here and I suspect most people will sensibly default to refusal at first at least. However, it may be the case that over time third parties will offer useful, and secure, addons. I can see no good reason for wanting to prevent that happening. It's certainly the case that banks, and others, need to advise caution to their clients, as they are, and that safeguards need to be in place. But those are issues that have been faced before, and no doubt will be again.

Peter

[syrio]

It's actually a very positive and very exciting thing and there could be a lot of benefits to customers.

The banks will just be a platform and other third parties can build services on top of them.

For instance you could have a single app which is able to present a single view of all your accounts with different institutions. You could have automatic sweeping of excess balance from your current account into a savings account with a different bank, or vice versa, you could have sweeping from your savings account into your current account to avoid overdrafts.

Somebody could build a better payments system. One that doesn't involve typing in 14 digits for your sort code and account number and if you get it wrong the payment goes to the wrong person with no warning and no guarantee of getting it back. (How can the banks payment systems still be so bad after all these years).

You could stop middlemen like Visa or Mastercard taking a cut whenever you do a debit or credit card transaction by making payments directly from your bank account.

But probably I can't even imagine what is going to happen.

But if you don't want to take part - you don't have to.

[Slarti]

But if you don't want to take part - you don't have to.

You have much greater faith in the efficiency of the finance industry than I do!


Slarti

[Alaric]

But probably I can't even imagine what is going to happen.

Lots of malware dedicated to emptying your account or buying dubious investments.

But if you don't want to take part - you don't have to.

You tend to get forced into accepting such things as part of the cost of some other transaction or activity.