The government has amended the consumer data right rules in the hope that there will be greater participation in the scheme, which has had a slow build since its launch in July last year.
The new rules, set out in Competition and Consumer (Consumer Data Right) Amendment (2021 Measures No.1) Rues 2021, introduce sponsored accreditation, a CDR representative model, access by trusted professional advisers and an access model called “CDR insight”.
In an exposure draft circulated in July, Treasury acknowledged that “Stakeholders have indicated that current barriers to enter the CDR, including the cost of accreditation, are deterring many businesses from participating.”
Under sponsored accreditation, an accredited person will be allowed to “sponsor” other parties to become accredited. This should reduce the cost of accreditation and the compliance burden for sponsored parties.
The sponsored “affiliate” will still have some compliance obligations, including dispute resolution, privacy safeguards and consent rules.
An alternative is for a party to avoid the need for accreditation by becoming a “CDR representative”. An accredited person would assume liability for the CDR representative.
Another change is that consumers will be allowed to share data with a trusted professional adviser. Consumers will nominate persons as trusted advisers, to whom an accredited person may disclose the consumer’s data.
The professions listed in the explanatory memorandum issued by Treasury include qualified accountants, lawyers, registered tax agents, financial counsellors, financial planners and mortgage brokers.
“The classes of trusted advisers are professions that are sufficiently regulated to ensure a strong level of consumer protection is maintained,” Treasury says.
The amendment also introduces the concept of “CDR insight”, which allows consumers to consent to their data being shared outside the CDR regime for “prescribed purposes that are considered low risk and that are designed to limit the data shared to only what is necessary for the consumer to receive a service.”
Prescribed purposes include identifying a consumer, verifying a consumer’s account balance, verifying a consumer’s income and verifying a consumer’s expenses.
The explanatory memorandum says: “These CDR insights would allow consumers to securely provide and confirm relevant factual information about themselves, while giving the recipient comfort in its authenticity and accuracy. These purposes are intended to support the sharing of information that the consumer could themselves confirm and understand.”
The amendment also includes arrangements for dealing with joint accounts. Under the original CDR rules, each joint account holder had to opt in before joint account data could be shared.
The new rule adopts an opt-out approach, which allows an individual joint account holder to independently agree to share data on the joint account by consenting to an accredited person collecting and using data. Either joint account holder would be able to override this setting at any time and switch off the data sharing.