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The OECD published a paper that analyzes the benefits, risks and implementation challenges of open finance and provides policy recommendations for the safe and successful implementation of such data-sharing frameworks in finance. It considers the impacts of providing access to customers' financial data and how to do this responsibly and safely, with due consideration for data privacy. The paper also discusses other consumer safeguards, notably related to consent and liability. Finally, it considers whether there is a need to support the development of technical infrastructure to promote data interoperability.

The Bank of England (BOE) and HM Treasury published a digital pound request for information on privacy, meaning the protection of users' personal and transaction data, and ensuring they have control and visibility over who can process their data and for what purposes. However, the digital pound would not be anonymous because the ability to identify and verify users is needed to prevent financial crime, but the BOE and government will not access users' personal data in a digital pound ecosystem. In that regard, the BOE is exploring technological solutions to prevent it from being able to access personal data via the core ledger. The deadline for responding is March 12, 2024. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/the-digital-pound/digital-pound-working-groups

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) announced further steps to promote the adoption of its harmonized ISO 20022 data requirements for more efficient processing of cross-border payments. A panel of global ISO 20022 market practice groups will be established in early 2025 to support the regular maintenance of the data requirements. Second, the CPMI is encouraging industry to develop global ISO 20022 market practice guidelines for fast payments based on the harmonized data requirements. Third, the CPMI will continue to engage with payment system operators and payment service providers to encourage them to implement the harmonized data requirements by end-2027.

South Africa's data privacy laws went into force, giving anyone processing personal information in the country a 12-month grace period to ensure that they comply with the requirements of the Protection of Personal Information Act (PoPI). From July 1, 2021, any non-compliance with PoPI will have consequences. Enforcement mechanisms under PoPI include penalties up to R10m ($590,500) civil proceedings instituted by data subjects, and criminal offences and fines in some circumstances. https://www.gov.za/documents/protection-personal-information-act

While some regulations (e.g., GDPR, FCRA, and CCPA) help to prevent institutions from freely sharing clients' sensitive information, some regulations (e.g., BSA 1970) require FIs to share certain financial data with government agencies to combat financial crime. This creates an inherent tension between the privacy and the integrity of financial transactions. In the past decade, significant progress has been made in building efficient privacy-enhancing technologies that allow computer systems and networks to validate encrypted data automatically. In this paper, we investigate some of these technologies to identify the benefits and limitations of each, in particular, for use in data sharing among FIs. As a case study, we look into the emerging area of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and how privacy-enhancing technologies can be integrated into the CBDC architecture. Our study, however, is not limited to CBDCs and can be applied to other financial scenarios with tokenized bank deposits such as cross-border payments, real-time settlements, and card payments.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is inviting payments experts to participate in technical talks on options for the secure exchange of payment-related data between payer and payee for digital euro transactions. The talks will center around the latest retail payment market innovations that can ensure the secure exchange of end-user data between payment initiation and payment acceptance devices, and the key considerations for a secure exchange of front-end data for the envisaged digital euro use cases, form factors and core and optional services.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a paper that, based on a representative survey of about 1,300 US consumers, found that women are less willing than men to share their financial transaction data in exchange for better offers on financial services. Differences in attitudes across groups, such as the willingness to take financial risks, concerns that data will become publicly available and concerns around personal safety, explain part of these gaps. The analysis also shows that older individuals are also less willing to share their data, perhaps as a matter of principle. This could result in biased samples and outcomes that are not in the interest of the underrepresented groups, e.g. in lending decisions, financial advice, and health applications.

The Australian government Inquiry into Future Directions for the Consumer Data Right released an issues paper in early March for consultation. The paper states that a key focus "will be how the Consumer Data Right could be expanded beyond the current 'read' access to include 'write' access.

This paper builds on the Bank of England's response to the Future of Finance Report, where the Bank proposed an Open Data Platform to boost access to finance for SMEs. The Open data for SME finance paper explains the proposal in more detail, and provides an update on what we have learnt from our research and industry engagement to date.

This report examines both the benefits and risks big data and AI can bring to the insurance industry. In particular, this reports discusses how the OECD Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence, and the European Commission's Independent High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence's (HLAG AI) Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI should be considered in the context of the insurance sector. The report concludes with policy areas in which policy makers may consider action in the insurance sector in relation to big data and AI going forward.

The European Commission has requested feedback from the public on its implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation. The feedback period is from April 1 to April 29.

UK Fintech lender Fintern is targeting as many as 15 million Britons whose credit scores aren't considered of sufficient quality by mainstream lenders; forcing them to turn to much more expensive options such as payday loans or buy now-pay later products. The U.K.'s open banking reforms enables Fintern to obtain the bank account data of any customer who wants to borrow from it, and use its analytics tools to get a detailed idea of what the borrower could afford to repay. If a loan is granted, Fintern continues to access borrowers' bank account data to spot issues as they occur so that they can intervene before problems with the loan get out of hand.

A Bank for International Settlements (BIS) paper reports on a recent survey of US households, finding that they say they are more likely to trust traditional financial institutions than government agencies or fintechs (and especially bigtechs) to safeguard their personal data. Respondents from racial minorities have less trust in financial institutions, while younger respondents trust fintechs relatively more. Female, minority and younger respondents are more concerned about implications of data-sharing for their personal safety.

The Bank of England is providing the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) with anonymized and aggregated credit and debit card transaction data to better inform policy-makers about how people have been spending their money. The ONS says the new data wil act as "experimental faster indicators" for monitoring UK purchases. They track the daily CHAPS payments made by credit and debit card payment processors to around 100 major UK retailers, whether it be online, over the phone or in a store.

Open Banking kicks off in Brazil The first of four phases of Brazil's Open Banking implementation has started, as part of the country's broader agenda of modernization of the national financial ecosystem. In the initial phase, there will be no sharing of data on customer registration or transactional activity. Instead, companies participating in the open banking ecosystem will need to open data on their service channels and the characteristics of banking products and services through open application programming interfaces (APIs). In July's second phase, participating institutions regulated, authorized and supervised by the Banco Central do Brasil will start sharing customer data, with their consent. This will be followed by August's third phase where consumers will be able to pay bills and make money transfers outside their bank's environment. The last phase, forecast for December, relates to sharing of additional customer details, in areas such as foreign exchange services, investments, insurance and salary accounts. https://www.bcb.gov.br/detalhenoticia/17307/nota

Arbol, a platform that allows farmers to hedge weather risks, is integrating Chainlink data oracles. With blockchain, settlements and payouts can be instant, whereas in the centralized world, participants may have to wait weeks, if not months. Farmers can hedge against various adverse weather conditions having a negative impact on their crops. They can buy a hedge - for example, if a temperature in their region reaches a critical level, which will trigger an automatic payout. By adding Chainlink's oracalized weather data feeds, the company's platform has become more decentralized and resilient.

Collateral is used in debt contracts to mitigate the difficulties ("agency problems") that arise when the lender's knowledge of the borrower is incomplete ("asymmetric information"). Banks usually require borrowers to pledge tangible assets, such as real estate, to help offset such problems in credit assessment, or to reduce moral hazard and enforcement problems. By contrast, large technology firms ("big techs") can use massive amounts of data ("big data") to better assess firms' creditworthiness. These capabilities could help to reduce the importance of collateral in solving asymmetric information problems in credit markets.

New agencies are trying to widen the range of financial data that's used to assess loan applicants. They hope to extend credit scoring to the unbanked, gig economy workers and young people with little credit history. These challengers use machine learning techniques to plough through financial transaction data, or to scrutinise online questionnaires. Machine learning is controversial in this area, as it could give rise to bias and discrimination in lending decisions. Nevertheless, large credit card companies such as Capital One and established agencies like Experian are showing interest in these new methods.

A Bank for International Settlements (BIS) working paper suggests that use of massive amounts of data by large technology firms (big techs) to assess firms' creditworthiness could reduce the need for collateral in credit markets. Using a unique dataset of more than 2 million Chinese firms that received credit from both an important big tech firm (Ant Group) and traditional commercial banks, the paper finds that a greater use of big tech credit, granted on the basis of machine learning and big data, could reduce the importance of collateral and potentially weaken the financial accelerator mechanism. https://www.bis.org/publ/work881.htm

State Street will provide crypto-asset fund administration capabilities for the firm's private funds clients" in partnership with Lukka. Specifically, State Street will leverage Lukka's product suite, which includes a proprietary middle and back-office data management solution, Reference Data, and Prime Pricing Data.