Elizabeth Sale
March 10, 2024
Open Banking has the potential to revolutionize the way Canadian consumers and financial institutions use and share data, once people understand what it is and how it works. Ian Bickis of The Canadian Press explains what open banking entails and what advantages it offers, ahead of upcoming federal legislation that is set to create a framework that will allow consumers to grant third-party businesses access to their banking and financial data for the purpose of conducting more thorough credit checks, for simplifying bill payments or for consolidating financial information in budgeting apps and programs. In the article, “Big changes coming to how Canadians bank, but adoption likely to be slow” — which was picked-up by CityNews Toronto — Bickis spoke with Osler’s Elizabeth Sale, partner, Financial Services.
One of the challenges Elizabeth points out is that because open banking is still a relatively new concept, people are still learning about it. “Typically, when I see consumers and people talking about it, it’s clear to me that it’s not well understood,” she said, adding that the name itself does little to enlighten customers as to what it’s all about. “That needs to be overcome, people need to actually understand what it is.”
Elizabeth suspects that the implementation of open banking will change little for consumers, except that people who already use financial tracking and budgeting tools will have a more secure means of sharing their data with those service providers.
The entire article can be read on the CityNews Toronto website.