Today, Brenton Charnley, ex-CEO of TrueLayer Australia & New Zealand, launches Open Finance Advisors, a specialist consultancy to help Australian and global businesses access open banking and make open finance a reality through the Consumer Data Right (CDR). 

Open Finance Advisors provides specialist advisory services including strategy, accreditation support, use case discovery and design, and program implementation in order to help businesses access open banking data in the right way. 

Brenton Charnley, CEO and Founder of Open Finance Advisors said: “I am excited about supporting businesses to develop their open banking and open finance strategies via the CDR. Open banking, and open finance more broadly, present an opportunity to revolutionise the financial services industry as we have already seen in the UK and EU under PSD2. However, at just two years old we are only just getting started with open banking in Australia under the CDR.” 

Despite the broad vision of the CDR, open banking in Australia is currently limited to read-access data sharing only. As of 1 November 2022, there are only 23 active Accredited Data Recipients and 112 active Data Holder brands as reported by the ACCC. 

“For CDR to take off, we need more use cases getting into the hands of consumers. And Open Finance Advisors’ mission is to make that happen. Having lived and breathed open banking and the CDR since its launch in 2020, we can help Australian and international businesses understand their options to access CDR data and then support them to make it a reality,” Charnley said. 

It is a busy time for open banking in Australia with the statutory review of the CDR released in October providing recommendations for improvement to increase participation as well as Treasury consultation on draft legislation for action initiation and extending designation into non-bank lending. With energy data sharing going live this month, we are now entering a new economy-wide era for the CDR as participants outside banking are included. 

“Whilst the Consumer Data Right’s ambition is to open up finance more broadly, we haven’t yet finished open banking. There is plenty more to do to make open banking a success in Australia. When compared to the more mature open banking market in the UK, we haven’t even scratched the surface on consumer adoption. The last two years have been all about compliance and increasing coverage on the Data Holder side. Now we enter an exciting phase where use cases will come to life facilitated by technology companies, incumbent banks and financial services businesses,” Charnley said.