CFIT has announced that will chair a new taskforce designed to provide customers and businesses in the UK with an optimised suite of Open Finance solutions. According to the announcement, the taskforce was developed on the foundation work done by the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT)’s knowledge of Open Finance.

This process took place by providing recommendations to the UK Government on how the financial data and information can be safely unlocked in order to improve small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) access to credit. The launch of the Open Finance taskforce was led with the support of HM Treasury, and it advances a number of the key recommendations that were set out by CFIT in its Blueprint Report as a priority for accelerating the development of the Open Finance agenda. More information on the announcement The Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) represents a delivery body that is responsible for setting a blueprint for financial development in the region of the UK.

In addition, the institution addresses the barriers to scaling the financial sector, while also facilitating partnerships, data-sharing across the overall fintech ecosystem, and producing proofs of value for the private sector to accelerate its growth in the industry. The taskforce is expected to have a mandate in order to identify and prioritise more use cases for Open Finance, while data sets are to be unlocked and APIs to be designed to facilitate improved SME finance availability. In addition, it will also identify commercially viable approaches to incentivise businesses in order to securely and efficiently share their financial information.

This will take place before considering appropriate next steps towards the procedure of implementing any agreement recommendations. Other key recommendations that were included within the Blueprint Report that was published by CFIT in late February 2024 were related to taking forward and developing the Proofs of Concept (PoCs). This was built by its collaboration with Citizens Advice and HSBC in order to accelerate the development of Open Finance and its benefits on vulnerable clients, as well as on increasing small and medium-sized enterprise lending volumes.

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