This piece appears in the online postings for Retail Banker International and while I will typically not summarize consumer banking related topics, this one is about banks sharing B2B data in the open banking era. The EBA has a working group on open banking and the recently published a 30 page thought leadership paper on digital consent management. This article is brief, but the mentioned paper is not, however, still worth a look-see.
Vincent Brennan, head of group operations and payments at Bank of Ireland, and chair of the EBA’s Open Banking Working Group, stated: “Our analysis confirms that in order to truly drive innovative data propositions, digital consent management and a standardisation of data exchange are required.…..“This will support secure and controlled accessibility of data at scale and with explicit consent given by the data owners, enabling banks and other service providers to address the emerging needs of business customers.
A seeming misconception of some who have an interest in the open banking space (which indeed is real in the EU and UK, but has broad market-based implications and long tenticles on the Reg side as well; think GDPR), is that the legislation is limited to the consumer environment. Indeed open banking requirements (and opportunities) span the full spectrum of client accounts, including corporate. So in this case the EBA is advocating standardized data approaches for banks to collaborate in attaining consent and better utilizing data for new/enhanced products and services. If they do not optimize the opportunity, then the fintech B2b aggregators will gladly take share.
The rise of B2B exchange platforms has driven competition in the market, and in an Open Banking world, third parties are embracing the opportunities by using data more effectively for analytics and value creation.
So the EBA is doing their job in advocating for the industry and makes some very good arguments in the though leadership piece.
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commerical and Enterprise Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
