Five major banks - including Lloyds, HSBC and Santander - have been heavily criticised by UK’s Competition and Markets Authority for dragging their heels over the delivery of Open Banking within their mobile apps.
The Open Banking initiative - launched on January 13 2018 - is designed to give customers greater to control over how their financial information is shared digitally and provide a deeper picture of the way they manage their money.
Instead of doing all their banking through one or two companies, customers should be able to have their current account with one provider and then add on other financial services, like an insurance policy, ISA, mortgage and investments through separate providers, all under one interface.
The five banks - which also include Bank of Ireland and Danske - have been found to be mainly in breach of deadlines for app-to-app redirection functionality, forcing users to rely on desktop-only data sharing.
The watchdog has now issued "enforcement directions" to them to open up their data to third party vendors. The actions that the banks must take include the employment of external professional consultants to validate their plans and monitor their progress.
Moneyhub chief executive Samantha Seaton said: "While there is huge appetite among the fintech community to transform and revitalise the user experience, some high street banks are dragging their heels and holding back progress," she says.
"Nearly every bank now sees the greatest engagement with customers through mobile banking apps that give immediate access to data and the ability to transfer money, even set up new payments with just a thumb print to confirm approval. It is disappointing that many banks have been slow to support ’app-to-app’ consent for third parties."
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