OUTPUTS (AVAILABILITY)

Headlines

As of August 2021, there were 119 firms with live to market open banking-enabled products and services.
In the six months to the end of August 2021, an additional 13 open banking-enabled products and services have come to market, with three firms withdrawing.
We have seen an expansion in live to market services addressing all six outcome areas, although the market remains dominated by propositions addressing:

improved financial decision-making (38)
expanded payments choice (29) and;
better borrowing (22).

Analysis of overall availability

An additional 13 open banking-enabled products and services have come to market in the six months ending August 2021, with three firms ceasing to offer services, including one as a result of acquisition..

As a result, the net number of services has grown to 119 since December 2020 (see Figure 2). We note that this metric, which only includes providers which are regulated players, is limiting in that it does not take account of models where the service provider is either an agent of an authorised TPP or is an unregulated provider that uses the services of an authorised TPP. In the next report we will consider how we can provide a fuller picture of availability, including other types of arrangement.

Figure 2: Number of live to market open banking-enabled products and services

Source: OBIE analysis, 2021. Includes live to market entities regulated as TPPs only. See explanatory note below Figure 4 below for details of methodology.

Analysis by outcome area

The Customer Evaluation Framework has identified six outcome areas. We set these out in Figure 3 and record the numbers in Figure 4.

Figure 3: Outcome areas

Figure 4: Live to market open banking-enabled products and services, by outcome area

Source: OBIE analysis, 2021.

Methodology notes for Figures 2 and 4:

Firms included: OBIE through its Insight, Experience and Support team monitors the number of TPPs which are regulated, active in the Sandbox or Production and who have a live to market service. In total, there are 125 live to market products and services. In analysis, six were removed to avoid double counting as they formed part of a group company.

Allocation to outcome area: The 119 were analysed using publicly available information (including participant websites and press articles). The analysis identified which of the six outcome areas the primary proposition fell into (see Appendix 1 for full details).

Mixed and other: As well as the six outcome areas defined in the Framework Methodology, we used two additional tags. We used ‘mixed’ where an enabling firm was supporting multiple outcome areas. We used ‘other’ for participants which did not fit any of the categories, although this was rare (six participants). As the Impact Report progresses, we may need to create new categories for these participants.

The analysis shows that the three most common outcome areas are improved financial decision-making, expanded payments choice and better borrowing. Together these three outcome areas represent 89 of the 119 firms included in the analysis.

To date, few firms have come to market with products or services focused on the switching, increased savings and investments, or access to advice areas.

The Expert Advisory Group noted that the intentions of the CMA Order and the desire to drive switching of personal current accounts (PCAs) and business current accounts (BCAs) was slightly masked in the report. This is because the increased switching outcome area includes products other than current account comparison and switching.

This merits further examination, which we will explore in future iterations of this report. Most firms can be clearly allocated to one of the six outcome areas. The six firms that are not allocated are offering:

round-up services to encourage charitable donations (2)
identification of vulnerability (1)
audit services (1)
account verification (1)
open banking as a small component in a broader proposition (1).

As the Framework evolves it will be important to assess whether these propositions make up a new outcome area or whether the definitions should be updated.

We expect innovation to deliver new and unanticipated products and services using open banking, and we take a positive view about this.

Appendix 2 includes additional detail of availability by outcome area over time.

Analysis by outcome area and end user type

Building on the analysis in Figures 2 and 4, Figure 5 shows the split between end user type. It shows that there is a slight bias towards consumer services (41), but still a significant number of small business-orientated services (25). There are a notable number of providers targeting both communities (53).

In most areas the availability of products and services was relatively balanced between end user types. For example, improved financial decision-making has 21 consumer offerings versus 17 small business offerings. Increased savings and investments, however, has a strong bias towards consumer offerings (four versus one).

Figure 5: Live to market open banking-enabled products and services split by outcome area and primary end user type

Source: OBIE 2021

Note: Based on an analysis of publicly available information, the team defined whether the participant was primarily focused on individual end users or small business end users. For participants that supported both, they were allocated to a category of both. + Note that for providers focused on expanding payments choice, it was not possible or practical to allocate to a consumer or small business end user. Most payments providers serve both small businesses (as beneficiaries) and both consumers and small businesses (as Payment Services Users (PSUs)).