Open finance

Open banking covers the payment account. Under PSD2 a bank has to let licensed account information and payment initiation providers read balances and transactions or start a payment, once the customer agrees. A current account is in scope. A securities account, a mortgage, a life insurance policy or a pension entitlement is not.

Open finance is the same principle applied to those other products. The customer decides who gets which data, for which purpose and for how long, and can withdraw the permission. Open data, in some countries called smart data, goes one step further and covers sectors outside finance, such as energy and telecoms, under the same consent rules.

The European Commission proposed the regulation on a framework for financial data access, COM(2023) 360, on June 28, 2023, in one package with PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation. FIDA would oblige banks, insurers and investment firms to share customer data with authorized data users on the customer's instruction, through financial data sharing schemes that set the interface rules and the compensation. The state of the negotiations, the data categories and the permission dashboard are on the FIDA regulation page.

The industry started before the law. The Berlin Group openFinance API Framework extends the NextGenPSD2 standard that most German banks use to services PSD2 does not require: request-to-pay, reservation of funds, direct API access for corporate customers and electronic direct debit mandates, with savings, loan and securities accounts planned as further account types. The European Payments Council's SPAA scheme sets commercial terms for such premium APIs.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority published its open finance feedback statement in March 2021, after a call for input that drew 169 responses; most respondents favored a phased rollout. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 has received Royal Assent, and the FCA has published the design of a future standard-setting body for UK open banking. How the UK built open banking first is on open banking in the UK.

Switzerland has no legal duty to share financial data. The Federal Council set open finance objectives for the industry in December 2022 and in June 2024 judged the progress sufficient, so it proposed no regulation; open banking in Switzerland covers the result. Open Finance Brasil moved in phases from public product data to account data, payments, investments and insurance under the central bank.

The first use is one view of a customer's whole financial position: current accounts, deposits at other banks, securities accounts and pension entitlements in one app. The Swiss Bankers Association names pension data from all three pillars as a possible next step for the multibanking service Swiss banks launched in 2025. For an adviser or a robo-advisor, the same data replaces the questionnaire a client fills in by hand.

Lenders read more than the current account. A loan decision that also sees existing loans and savings starts from the customer's full position, a use described on open banking in lending. Switching gets simpler when a new provider can read the old contract with the customer's permission. Liability for wrong data and the cost of APIs for insurance and securities systems, which never had one, are still open questions.

Finance Loop is the meeting place for people in Germany, Austria and Switzerland who build and supervise data access in finance: bank API teams, insurers, wealth managers, fintechs and the compliance staff around them. It connects the finance, IT and AI communities, with events in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg.

Finance Loop is a strategic partner of the Digital Euro Association, whose Digital Euro Conference in Frankfurt covers digital money infrastructure next to open banking, and it partnered with GFTN for the Point Zero Forum 2026 in Zurich.

Open finance is the sharing of a customer's financial data beyond the payment account, on the customer's permission and through APIs: savings, investments, loans, mortgages, pensions and insurance. It extends the open banking model of PSD2 to the rest of a customer's financial products.

No. Open banking is the part that covers payment accounts, and in the EU it is law under PSD2. Open finance covers the other financial products and has no EU law in force yet; FIDA is the proposal that would create it. Open banking is a subset of open finance.

Not yet. Germany applies PSD2 through the Payment Services Supervision Act, which covers payment accounts only. FIDA would be an EU regulation and apply in Germany directly once adopted. Until then, data on securities accounts, pensions or insurance is shared only by contract or through voluntary schemes.