Report

OBL’s response to JROC’s proposal for the design of the future entity for open banking

20 May 2024

OBL welcomes the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee’s (JROC) recommendations on the design of the Future Entity and the creation of the Interim Entity.

We fully support the commitment to establishing a Future Entity that will be central to:

(a) delivering a well-functioning, commercially viable and sustainable open banking ecosystem

(b) building on the foundations of what has been achieved under the CMA Order, and,

(c) ensuring the UK’s continued leadership in open banking. 

This will provide the means for transitioning ongoing Order-related requirements to a long-term framework and the future success of open banking.

All open banking activities, whether they be Order or non-Order related, share a common vision and purpose, namely to deliver enhancements for the benefit of the wider ecosystem, including consumers and businesses, together with the UK economy as a whole.

We believe that ensuring this commonality of vision is key to effective attainment of these desired outcomes and facilitates the delivery of them. This is a key principle that must underpin the evolution of open banking. It is also critical to ensure that the delivery approach is as cost-efficient and cohesive as possible.

The direction that is set out in the report will provide the right foundations to take forward open banking and allow expansion of both the Interim Entity and Future Entity’s remit to develop Smart Data in other sectors and to drive the development of account-to-account retail transactions to offer consumers and businesses an attractive alternative to card payments.

This aligns with the PSR’s objective to support the development of account-to-account retail transactions and the FCA’s objective to have a variety of safe payment methods. This can only be a good thing for the future of open banking and Smart Data more broadly.

You can read the response in more detail here.

Read OBL’s response to the JROC report