Open financial data's promise

Open financial data's promise

Bangkok Post | 2021-09-14 23:50

From Australia and Brazil to Nigeria and the United States, countries are putting in place new guidelines and regulations governing the digital sharing of financial data. The aim is to spur the creation of digital-data ecosystems that smooth and speed interactions between financial institutions and their individual and corporate customers. But successful adoption of open financial data could also provide a broader boost to global GDP. By enabling customer data to flow frictionlessly between financial institutions through application programming interfaces (APIs), open-data systems reduce or remove the need for manual data processing. Strong consumer trust is the essential prerequisite for such a system. That can be secured only by establishing a protective cushion of user consent, data protection, and cybersecurity. With safeguards in place, the benefits can be significant. Individual…