The banking industry will be marking its first anniversary in January 2019, on the most argued and controversial subject, the enablement of Open Banking platform. The motive behind the move was to eliminate the dominance of big bank's and give licensed Fintech's access to consumer accounts and product information, at the same time empower the consumers to redirect their data for alternative financial services. such empowerments should produce a balance and effectively reduce the costs of account switching and cost of all associated fees. Liberalising consumer data across industries such as telecommunication, energy, health ,education, and other financial services such as insurance will change the way business is conducted. The ability to translate huge sum of data, which results in value and opportunities, can lead to new business ideas and long term differentiation.

Open banking will allow consumers to simply consolidate all their finances on one application, but what is Open banking?. Open Banking is a software platform developed by licensed Fintech's, which allows consumers to combine all their raw financial data form multiple banks on one Money dashboard, providing the consumer a snapshot of their finances in real time. The advantage of a consolidated real time financial dashboard can create opportunities for small businesses and consumers to access credit facilities much faster, at the same time it will enable the lenders to assess the risk levels in a more affordable way and avoid the analogue credit risk assessment by harnessing the data patterns of incomes and spending.The lenders by using the Open Banking can leverage from improved customer experience, new revenue streams, and a sustainable service model for underserved markets.

With Open Banking the lenders can almost eliminate the high cost of credit for riskier consumers, and could also eliminate the need for unauthorised costly credit lines altogether. The Lenders through Open Banking can facilitate a backup cost calculated line of credit that kicks in when the customer approaches the limit of their authorised overdraft facility. By doing so the lender has provided an extra credit at a much more competitive rate and enables controls to secure the banks credit lines and protects the consumer for incurring overpriced overdraft fees.

According to an E&Y survey carried our in march 2018 , 94% of Fintech's licensed setups in the UK see it as a major area of opportunity, 81% of respondents are actively developing Open Banking platforms and 29% consider themselves to be fully prepared. fintech start-ups anticipating a shifting competitive dynamics, in the form of greater collaboration with existing financial institutions. However, there is work to be done to realise open banking’s full potential. Customer adoption is seen as the biggest challenge. According to PWC report, June 218 Open Banking has potential to create a revenue opportunity of £7.2bn and by 2022, catering for 4.8 million small business and 32.7 million consumers, the report also claims that Open banking users have increased from 720 K to 1.2 million between May and June 2018.

Open Banking has created and realised multiple advantages in the UK financial market such as repatriation of data, more access, more control, more personalisation, cheaper services, and more innovation. Certainly it will take longer to see mature Open Banking platform especially for more complex products, however can the local market adapt such revolution and make all prohibited consumer data available, in my opinion the local regulatory bodies and the banking sector should embark on this new industry, which is opening up for entrepreneurs to create the next generation of personalized banking services at low cost, the local banking sector if adapted the Open Banking it will need to challenge the existing business models to prepare for the future.