Rob Hale was the chief data officer at Regional Australia Bank when it made the surprise move of being the first ADI to be both a data provider and an accredited data recipient when Australia’s Consumer Data Right was launched in July last year.
Hale has left RAB to join UK open banking specialist TrueLayer, which launched officially in Australia in September when it received unrestricted data recipient accreditation.
In his new role as TrueLayer’s head of banking, Hale will work with local financial institutions to help develop their open banking services and with TrueLayer’s international clients looking for opportunities in open banking here.
Reflecting on RAB’s decision to be an early adopter in open banking, he said: “Our view was that the Consumer Data Right aligns well with the ethos of mutual banking. It is using data to liberate service offerings.
“An advantage of getting in early was that we were able to talk to regulators about where they were heading and have some input into the policy discussion. We were surprised at the high level of engagement between the regulators and industry as CDR came together.”
Hale said one example where industry was able to have an influence was over the handling of joint accounts. Under the original scheme rules, each joint account holder had to opt in before joint account data could be shared.
The rule was changed to 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.
Hale said: “We challenged the joint account rule and we were able to show the problems with how it was playing out. The regulators were very responsive.”
Hale says much of the criticism of the rollout of CDR is fair: ADIs have been slow to meet their obligations; the amount of data available through the scheme has been extremely limited; and use cases have been slow to emerge.
However, RAB’s view was that it would be an important development and it was worth committing to it early.
In September, RAB launched its first open banking product, a loan affordability assessment process that relies on the customer giving the bank access to two years of their bank transaction data.
Hale said: “There are a couple of advantages to this. The shared data approach is much cleaner and quicker. The loan applicant doesn’t have to do anything besides giving us permission to access their data. There is no document scanning, or any of that.
“The other advantage is that with two years’ data we get a long-term view of the customer’s financial history. We get a more accurate view of their income and spending.”
When asked what the likely use cases of open banking will be, Hale cites the usual suspects – data for loan assessments, personal financial management tools and more targeted product offers from financial institutions and comparison sites based on the consumer’s history.
Hale said another use case that has not been widely discussed is identity verification. A bank could provide a service verifying a consumer’s identity when they sign up for any service that requires an ID check.