By Oliver Smith on Thursday 22 December 2022
Monzo, Wise, Moneyhub and more than a dozen other fintechs have written to the FCA and PSR to complain about the progress so far.
Seventeen fintechs have written to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) to complain about the lack of progress on the future of open banking in the UK.
Among the fintech signatories are Monzo, Wise, Moneyhub, Snoop, Plend, Plum and TomatoPay, along with two industry groups, the Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec) and the Financial Data and Technology Association (Fdata).
The letter states that the recent update from the Treasury, FCA, CMA and PSR last week on the status of open banking: “did little to assuage our concerns that the integrity and potential of open banking is at risk”
“We have not received clear direction from the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee (JROC) about how the 2017 CMA Order will continue to be enforced after the Open Banking Implementation Entity is dissolved,” the letter continues.
Organised by Coadec, the group calls for an acceleration of the process to define the future governance and enforcement of open banking in 2023.
“We’ve written this letter and convened a great group of Fintech supporters to call on the JROC to speed up,” said Coadec’s fintech policy lead Luke Kosky.
“When we look back on the last twelve months, it’s hard to point to concrete progress in our world-leading open banking regime. While an undeniable challenge, defining the future governance of open banking is a critical next step, but is taking too long.”
The update from the Treasury last week mostly contained the widely agreed talking points that have been repeated several times before, yet with the CMA due to announce the completion of the implementation of open banking shortly, it’s still unclear what comes next and what will happen to the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE).
An industry consultation led by the CMA ran throughout 2021, which resulted in the JROC being established in March 2022 and that, in turn, created a Strategic Working Group (SWG) in August 2022.
Since August the SWG has organised a series of industry ‘sprints’ focused on payments, data and the wider ecosystem, with the result of those sprints and the recommendation of a future roadmap passed to the JROC around 12 December.
Last week the JROC said it would finally publish its recommendations and roadmap in Q1 2023.
The full letter to the FCA and PSR, along with the signatories, can be found here.
