UK’s FCA on open finance

Britain’s financial regulator has set out a plan to expand “open banking” into “open finance,” so people and small businesses can reuse more of their financial data to shop for products. (fca.org.uk) The Financial Conduct Authority published the roadmap on April 14, 2026, and said it wants open finance to move from “vision to delivery” by 2030. Its first priorities are small and medium-sized enterprise lending and consumer mortgages. (fca.org.uk) In plain terms, open finance would let a customer permit one provider to pull data held by another provider, much as open banking already lets apps read current-account data with consent. The Financial Conduct Authority said that broader data could include information tied to mortgages, investments, savings and pensions. (fca.org.uk) For small firms, the regulator is framing payment flows and cash-flow records as inputs for credit decisions, with the aim of speeding up loan applications and widening access to borrowing. For households, it is looking at whether shared data can improve mortgage applications and ongoing mortgage management. (fca.org.uk) The roadmap puts 2026 down as the year for testing and prioritising use cases. The Financial Conduct Authority said it will run a PolicySprint in the second quarter, use a taskforce called Prioritisation and Real-world Insights Selection Matrix by the third quarter, and hold a TechSprint plus a discussion paper in the fourth quarter. (fca.org.uk) The regulator said it will work with HM Treasury on options for a regulatory framework by the end of 2027. It also said firms that already have the right permissions and data access could launch some open-finance products sooner. (fca.org.uk) This plan sits inside a wider British “smart data” push, which is meant to let customers move their data between providers across sectors. In its April 2024 Smart Data Roadmap, the government listed finance, banking, energy, transport, telecommunications, retail and home buying as target areas and cited an estimate that wider data mobility could add £27.8 billion a year to gross domestic product. (gov.uk) The Financial Conduct Authority is building on open banking rather than starting from scratch. In January 2025, the Financial Conduct Authority and Payment Systems Regulator said the United Kingdom already had more than 11.7 million active open-banking users and more than 22.1 million open-banking payments a month. (fca.org.uk) The regulator’s own 2025 research note said the case for open finance comes with technical and consumer hurdles, including outdated systems, inconsistent data standards and low public awareness. That note was commissioned to shape the strategy but did not set policy by itself. (fca.org.uk) Industry groups backed the direction on Tuesday while pressing for common standards and infrastructure. Innovate Finance chief strategy officer Adam Jackson said open finance could support a new wave of products if firms can unlock data in a way that keeps consumer trust. (fca.org.uk) The immediate question is not whether open finance exists in law today, but which use cases the Financial Conduct Authority chooses to build first in 2026. The answer will shape whether the next version of British data sharing is mostly about better mortgages and faster small-business loans, or something broader. (fca.org.uk)