BSP expects open finance to spur rise of customer-centric products

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) expects the development of more customer-centric financial products following the implementation of BSP’s Open Finance Framework.

Open finance supports a consent-driven data sharing scheme that promotes collaborative partnerships among incumbent financial institutions (FIs) and new players that adhere to the same standards of data security and privacy.

“The framework sees customers as owners of their transaction data, which can be shared if they wish to do so. With more data shared, FIs and third-party players are incentivized to adopt a customer-centric product development cycle,” said BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno during the recent European-Philippine Business Summit.

“For example, your main banking app can insert a feature that lets you add accounts from your other banks to help you monitor all your accounts. Your investing app can also let you add your bank account to let you see how much you can invest. This is the promise of open finance,” the Governor explained.

With greater access to consumer data, banks and third-party providers could also tailor a broader array of financial products such as banking products and services, investments, pension, and insurance.

Issued in June this year under Circular No. 1122, the Open Finance Framework is a component of the BSP’s Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap, which aims to convert at least 50 percent of the total volume of retail payments into digital form and to onboard at least 70 percent of Filipino adults to the financial system.