Open banking in the UK: where are we and what are the next steps?

Following a six-year bedding in period open banking is starting to gather pace as legislative and regulatory initiatives start to pave the way for open finance. Open banking was launched in the UK in January 2018 following a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) market investigation into retail banking which led to the Retail Banking Market Investigation Order 2017 (CMA Order). Open banking is the name given to the use of application programming interfaces (APIs) to collate data and allow third parties to access (principally) current accounts with participating banks (and related data) with the account holder’s consent therefore leading to greater innovation and competition. At the time of launch the nine largest current account providers (known as the CMA9) in the UK were required to adopt these reforms.

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