About

Open Future World

Open Future World is the largest global source of information on progress in open banking and beyond. Our global hub shares what’s worth paying attention to and highlights who’s who. Put simply, we bring together the best people and ideas from across this emerging sector.

We provide free resources to help you discover and connect with peers / prospects (directory, events) and curated content to highlight progressive work and thinking (news, articles, presentations). 

Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter to keep yourself informed – and to be the first to hear about our new initiatives. And check out our Engage page to find out how you can get involved and raise your profile.

BBVA API Market’s review of the Open Future World Directory 

We’ve made Belvo’s list of fintech influencers to follow 

Our definitions

OPEN BANKING

Open banking is a system where banks’ customers can choose to share their financial data with other organisations – for example, fintechs or competitor banks. Open banking initiatives are emerging in major markets around the world, driven by regulatory requirements and/or by industry collaborations.

Open banking aims to spur increased consumer choice, greater competition among banks, and the development of innovative financial services products. Early examples of open banking services include account aggregators (allowing customers to see all their bank accounts together), personal financial management tools, credit-decisioning services using transaction (and alternative) data, and new payment methods.

Legally mandated open banking systems tend to require banks to allow individual consumers, and sometimes smaller businesses, to share their data. However open banking is evolving to also include the sharing of corporate financial data, regardless of regulatory requirements.

From a technical perspective, the implementation of open banking generally involves the use of standardised APIs to share data. This aims to provide a more effective and secure means to share data than ‘screen scraping’ technology which relies on customers sharing their online banking credentials.

Open banking systems of some kind exist in more than 50 countries around the world. Well-known examples include the UK’s Open Banking and the European Union’s PSD2 (Second Payment Services Directive).

OPEN FINANCE

Open finance extends the idea of open banking – allowing customers to share their financial data – to a wider range of financial services providers and products. So open finance can include savings, investments, pensions, borrowings and insurance, and involve not just banks but investment managers, insurers and other providers.

Like open banking, open finance aims to increase competition and drive innovation. Open finance is likely to take a similar approach – for example, the development of standardised APIs.

Early steps towards open finance in the UK include the Financial Conduct Authority’s Advisory Group on open finance and The Investing and Savings Alliance (TISA) Open Savings & Investments Project. Outside the UK, the industry-driven Financial Data Exchange (FDX) in the USA goes well beyond payments accounts, while regulations introducing open banking – such as Australia’s Consumer Data Right (CDR) – already envisage an extension to other financial products (for example, pensions) and indeed to other sectors such as utilities.

EMBEDDED FINANCE

Embedded finance is the integration of financial services within the digital offering of a non-financial company. Embedded finance provides financial services where and when they are needed, rather than the customer dealing separately with a financial services provider.

Embedded finance allows companies to deliver new value propositions and improved customer experiences. Early examples include the integration of payments functionality and point of sale credit offerings within apps and online platforms.

Embedded finance shares several similarities with open banking / open finance. These include the API-based technical integration, the unbundling/rebundling of financial services on different platforms, and the value that can be added by sharing customer data.

PLUS…

Data portability allows individuals to obtain and reuse their personal data for their own purposes across different services. It allows them to move, copy or transfer personal data easily from one IT environment to another in a safe and secure way, without affecting its usability. (this is the ICO definition).

Data mobility: The ability to obtain and reuse their personal data from an organisation, in near real time within a trusted governance and liability framework.

Open data:  Data that’s available to everyone to access, use and share, therefore is neither personal nor proprietary data. (this is the ODIs definition of Open Data).

Personal Data Facilitator: An entity that acts to empower the individual to exercise their rights under data protection, to integrate and orchestrate the sharing of their data, within a trusted framework, which unlocks cross-sectorial data beyond Open Banking.