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Open Banking - Revolutionising SA’s financial landscape and empowering consumers

May 18, 2023 Open Banking, Shanaaz Trethewey, Comcorp South Africa,


Open Banking - Revolutionising SA’s financial landscape and empowering consumers

 

Open Banking is about sharing data securely between banks, financial institutions, and third-party providers, allowing consumers to transact in a much easier way; and eliminates the need to manually present documents, reducing time and effort taken for compliance or verification purposes.  

 

The concept of Open Banking is not new. It was first introduced in the UK in 2018 and has been implemented in several countries around the world. South Africa has been observing these trends to best gauge next steps – learning what happens beyond first implementation. For Shanaaz Trethewey, chief operating officer for Comcorp South Africa, a software innovator and specialist in authentication technology solutions, local trends are picking up and there is a growing comfort around adopting digital consent models and the transmission of data on behalf of consumers. 

 

“As a country, South Africa has laws of a global standard, and our financial institutions have very stringent compliance requirements with our verification processes being of a world class standard.   As we embed automated ways to comply with these requirements – we are most enabled to receive authentic supporting documents with permission-based sharing models – mimicking elements of open banking principles.  We can see evidence of this around us – whether it’s in the form of permission consumers provide for credit checks or in the form of payment platforms whilst shopping online. As a business - and consumer community - we need to really think broader to extend these emerging trends to maximise how we transact,” she says. 

 

Whilst permission-based data sharing makes it easier for the consumer and the financial institution to complete their assessment or verification processes –open Banking goes one step further and eliminates additional time and effort, by moving the focal point to the individual, and how they own their data. This is done by centralising the exchange to an independent platform where the required information can be securely shared across different industries and third-party service providers upon request.

 

The main goal of Open Banking is to empower consumers by giving them more control over their financial data and enable them to access a wider range of financial services. It can also help to create a more competitive and transparent financial market, where consumers can easily take advantage of the wealth of products and services that are available.

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