INTRODUCTION & APPROACH

The Revised Roadmap included the requirement for the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) to create a framework for measuring progress towards meeting the policy objectives of open banking, and how it was delivering the intended outcomes for the UK’s consumers and small businesses.

The first report was published in early 2021 and this is the second Open Banking Impact Report. The reports will 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, OBIE commissioned the Personal Finance Research Centre (PFRC) at the University of Bristol to create a framework for measuring consumer outcomes from Open Banking.

We summarise this framework and its various components in Appendix 5 and we continue to use this approach. It is complex to measure most of the framework components and the data presented is directional in some places. Generally, we have had to rely on several underlying assumptions, which are transparently stated in the report.

The initial Open Banking Impact Report focused on:

Outputs :

the availability of open banking-enabled propositions.

Intermediate outcomes 1 :

levels of customer adoption and other metrics related to adoption.

Ultimate outcomes 2 :

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

Consumer attitudes towards services

This second report represents a significant development on the first (see Figure 1) including some unique research into the attitudes of open banking users towards the services they are using and how those services impact their financial health. The research focused on open banking propositions in two specific outcome areas:

improved financial decision-making; and
increased saving and investing.

Figure 1: Evolution of the Open Banking Impact Report

2Based on feedback from the Expert Group we convened to feedback on the Framework, it was agreed that awareness in itself 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 this in future reports.