Author: Ellie Duncan
If there is one word that sums up this era of banking, it is ‘personalisation’. Consumers expect personalised and bespoke services from their bank. To achieve that level of hyper-personalisation, many consumers are no longer loyal to one bank. Instead, they have relationships with different financial institutions to meet their financial needs and goals.
The Accenture Banking Consumer Study 2025 found that 73% of consumers engage with multiple banks in addition to their main bank, and that they hold accounts with an average of two banks and two digital wallets.
There is also evidence, though, that consumers are loyal to their first banking ‘relationship’, with 61% having remained with their primary bank for more than seven years, according to the same Accenture study.
Despite this apparent loyalty, banks and financial institutions should not risk becoming complacent. The onus is on them to retain their customers by continually innovating.
Designing for customers and building trust
Fortunately, the advent of open banking in many jurisdictions has enabled financial institutions to do just this.
Open banking can be summed up as consumer-permissioned data sharing. Consumers consent to their financial data being shared in ‘exchange’ for more personalised and inclusive products and services.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the ‘channels’ by which consumers’ financial data is securely shared – the data request, or API call, is made by the third-party provider to the financial institution, and the data is transported safely and securely to the organization requesting it.
By placing consumers in control of their financial data, open banking is also an opportunity to maintain and build consumer trust in financial services.
To paraphrase a popular saying, trust is hard earned and easily lost. At a time when bank branches are closing, leaving many towns and rural areas without a single branch, the ability to provide a personalised and bespoke digital banking experience to customers is critical.
Use cases
For banks – from the incumbents, to newer challenger and digital banks – the adoption of open banking APIs enables the design and delivery of customer-centric propositions.
One open banking use case is personal financial management tools that give individuals the ability to view their finances in one place, to encourage better budgeting and saving habits, or to enable debt consolidation and management.
It is not only about better serving existing customers, but about onboarding individuals who are financially excluded, or underserved. These include individuals who are credit ‘invisible’, perhaps because they are new-to-country, or who have not had access to mainstream credit in the past and have no credit footprint, leaving them financially vulnerable.
Financial services providers can use open banking data to better assess an individual’s creditworthiness, thereby making more informed and accurate lending decisions. As a result, organizations may be able to lend to individuals that previously would not have received a loan or credit based on their traditional credit score.
Looking to an open finance future
Open banking is just the start of an open finance future in which consumer-permissioned data sharing expands from the current account and credit application-focused use cases mentioned above, to encompass mortgages, insurance, investments and pensions.
Many countries, such as Brazil, have already implemented open finance, and the UK has an open finance ‘blueprint’, as a result of the ‘Open Finance Coalition’ convened by the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology.
Some of the use cases already unlocked by open banking can help to identify new customer segments and point to a more financially inclusive future.
Consumer-driven banking is a new way for banks and financial institutions to deliver innovative financial services at the point of need and, in doing so, has the potential to engender trust and loyalty among consumers.
