Open finance is the future of banking

The global COVID-19 pandemic has shone a floodlight on financial vulnerabilities and the stress they cause for families. A recent survey shows that only 22% of Americans give themselves high scores on their own financial wellness. This is a failing grade for the financial services industry and a call to action: Providers must begin competing on customer outcomes. Enter open finance, which is premised on a simple idea: making financial data accessible to everyone. In practice, open finance describes networks of secure connections, primarily application programming interfaces (APIs), that allow customer-permissioned data and services to flow between banks and third-party providers. People benefit from access, portability and optionality and the industry benefits, too.