By Simone Plances, Manager, innovation at the FCA
‘This is an evacuation alarm. Please leave the building immediately.’
Not exactly the words you want to hear during a breakthrough discussion on the future of financial data sharing. But in many ways, this moment captured the essence of our Open Finance Sprint: resilient, collaborative and relentlessly forward-looking. Undeterred, participants grabbed their ideas and continued brainstorming in the sunshine outside. Bringing together over 100 stakeholders from across the financial sector, the sprint aimed to turn big ideas into practical solutions.
From the moment conversations began, it was clear: this wasn’t the usual polite discussion about incremental change. This was about completely transforming how people engage with their money. At the heart of this discussion were 4 key opportunity areas. They served as a compass, helping us imagine a transformed financial system built on a wide range of data and able to support each individual consumer’s financial goals.
Our 4 compass points were:
financial wellbeing
financial growth
financial resilience
digital ID and verification
Each of these areas offered a different lens through which we explored what open finance can become. They weren’t isolated themes, but interconnected priorities that, together, form the foundation for a system that supports people with their goals, challenges and aspirations.
From ideas to impact
The sprint revealed a clear and exciting trajectory. Conversations moved from exploring financial pain points to developing tools that can start to address these issues. This wasn’t just technology for technology’s sake – it was innovation with purpose. It was about real needs and real impact. We saw ideas like:
Financial management dashboards that evolve in real time according to a business or consumer’s circumstances and the financial products they use.
Credit decisions beyond backward-looking scores.
Real-time spending insights to help consumers identify savings opportunities.
Hyper-personalised investment tools.
Adaptive and bespoke small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) lending.
I found myself nodding along as conversations shifted from debt management platforms to integrated financial growth journeys and long-term financial wellbeing.
A shared commitment
We talked about the need for continued collaboration paired with adaptive regulation that supports innovation. A strong, accessible digital ID was seen as the key to unlocking access, and we kept coming back to commercial sustainability – because for any of this to be successful, it has to work in the real world. Understandably, data security and financial education were seen as critical to improving financial inclusion.
Setting our course
We're moving from services that require us to understand them, to ones that understand us. Services that recognise our starting points, anticipate our goals and help chart personalised routes – complete with alerts for financial roadblocks, rest stops for savings, and scenic detours toward investment opportunities that align with our values. If traditional finance is a paper map, open finance is a GPS that knows you.
Open finance is about designing an intelligent, adaptive financial ecosystem that aligns and evolves with people's lives. To transform potential into reality, a clear message was that further collaboration and action was needed at pace.
Here are some of the ways we’re moving forward:
Doubling down on SME finance – a use case that could drive growth across the economy – we’re designing a dedicated tech sprint to accelerate progress.
Supporting the development of use cases and testing policy ideas to help advance open finance.
Driving interoperability – nationally and globally, including through Project ApertaLink is external, led by the Bank for International Settlements, where we’ll help shape the future of global open finance.
Researching the future of data sharing – looking at how technology is reshaping the very architecture and infrastructure of financial systems, and what that means for the UK.
From vision to reality
We asked participants to envision 2030 – a transformative future where technology intuitively understands consumers, empowers their decisions and evolves alongside them. It’s safe to say I left with a profound sense that the vision for 2030 isn’t just a distant destination – it’s a journey we’re already embarking on together.
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