• 16 Oct, 2018 01:00 am

The arrival of Open Banking is a key reason why the world of financial services in October 2018, as this year’s Sibos conference gets underway in Sydney, is different from the world of financial services one year previously, at the time of the Sibos conference in Toronto. The second Payments Services Directive (PSD2) of the European Union (EU) came into force on 13 January 2018; the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), on 25 May. Most financial services businesses in the EU also had to consider the implications of the latest Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II), which had taken effect on 3 January 2018.

Both the March 2018 and the June 2018 editions of Financial IT were devoted predominantly to Open Banking. In March, we looked in depth and breadth at the changes that could take place to financial markets, existing financial institutions and Fintechs. The basic question was ‘what?’, and our perspective was ‘top-down’. In June, we looked at how specific problems which arise from the application of GDPR and PSD2 might be dealt with. The basic question was ‘how?’, and our perspective was ‘bottom-up’.