Advice data “out-of-scope” for open banking: ASIC

In a submission to Treasury’s review into open banking in Australia, ASIC said greater access to certain types of data would promote competition and innovation within the financial services industry.

“ASIC envisages that open banking would allow consumers to access their own financial services data – i.e. data on the products and services they have acquired and data on their use of financial products and services,” the submission said.

“It would also facilitate consumers gaining access to financial institutions’ data about the institutions’ products and services.”

However, the benefits offered by more accessible data differ depending on the particular type of data, with financial advice data falling outside of ASIC’s vision.

“ASIC envisages that not all data could and should be shared via open banking. For example, we consider data that is value-added (e.g. financial advice data and data derived from analysis of transaction data) should be out of scope,” the submission said.

Instead, the regulator argued that consumer data (meaning bank account, credit card and loan data) and non-consumer data (or data from financial services providers about their products and services) should be the focus of the proposed open banking regime.