UK government launches open finance taskforce chaired by CFIT
The UK government is launching an industry-led open finance taskforce chaired by the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) with the aim to “unlock the full potential of open finance”.
CFIT to chair open finance taskforce
Open finance, described by CFIT CEO Ezechi Britton MBE as the next “great opportunity for our economy”, seeks to expand upon the concept of open banking.
In open banking, financial institutions safely share customers’ transactional data with trusted third parties. Open finance aims to extend this sharing to include additional information such as an individual’s savings, credit scores, pensions, and more.
Announced by the Economic Secretary to the UK Treasury, Bim Afolami, at this year’s Innovate Finance Global Summit (IFGS) in London, the taskforce will expand upon the groundwork laid and recommendations made by the CFIT in its Blueprint Report, released in February 2024. This includes exploring methods to securely unlock financial data to improve access to credit for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The taskforce will work to “identify and prioritise” which data sets should be unlocked and the APIs best placed to facilitate improved availability of SME finance, as well as discover and promote additional use cases for open finance.
In addition, a focus for the government initiative will be to uncover “commercially viable approaches” to “incentivise” enterprises to safely share their financial data.
The CFIT, which launched early last year, is a private sector-led organisation dedicated to leveraging industry expertise and nurturing growth within the UK’s fintech sector.
To find out more about the CFIT and its different initiatives, listen to our interview with the body’s chair, Charlotte Crosswell OBE, on the What the FinTech? podcast.
