Chi Onwurah – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chi Onwurah on 2016-09-05.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to the Open Banking Standard report published in February 2016, how the Government plans to ensure that customers provide informed consent when using open banking services.

Simon Kirby

The Open Banking Working Group was created at the request of the government to explore options for allowing customers to use their bank data in a safe, secure and efficient manner. The Group published its report in February 2016. The conclusions reached represent the views of the Working Group and are not government policy.

Subsequently, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued the final report of its investigation into retail banking on 9 August 2016. As part of this, the CMA requires nine leading UK banks to create an open API (Application Programming Interface) to allow access to customer account information as set out in the revised Payment Services Directive (PSDII), which will come into force in January 2018. Informed consent, data protection and cyber security are key considerations in the PSDII, and the government will be consulting on the transposition of this directive shortly.