INTRODUCTION AND APPROACH

We are committed to periodically publishing a report examining progress towards meeting the policy objectives of open banking, and the extent to which it is delivering the intended outcomes for the UK’s consumers and small businesses.

June 2021 edition

Oct 2021 edition

This is the third Open Banking Impact Report. We believe these reports should continue to be published in a six-monthly cycle. Open banking is a complex policy initiative with a range of impacts and external factors influencing its success. For that reason, we developed a framework for measuring consumer outcomes from open banking in 2020. This framework and its components are summarised in Appendix 5 and continue to underpin our approach to this evaluation. It is complex to measure most of the components and the data presented is directional in some places. We have had to rely on several underlying assumptions, which are transparently stated in the report.

The focus of the initial Open Banking Impact Reports was on:

Outputs

the availability of open banking-enabled propositions.

Intermediate outcomes

levels of customer adoption and other metrics related to adoption.

Intermediate outcomes

an indicative view on the value of such services to end-users.

This third report includes unique research into the attitudes of small business users of open banking-enabled cloud accounting services and how these services are impacting the management of their accounting needs and business decisions. This is relevant to improved financial decision-making and thus business efficiency and productivity.

Figure 1: Evolution of the analytical components

4Based on feedback from the Expert Group we convened to feed back on the Framework, it was agreed that awareness was complex to track and not necessarily helpful given that many users of open banking may not be aware that the service they have signed up to uses open banking. We will review whether to include in future reports.