Open finance refers to the sharing of personal and non-personal customer data held by financial sector intermediaries and other data holders with third-party providers for the purpose of providing a wide range of financial and information services. It is an extension to a broader range of data (credit, savings, investment, insurance, pensions) of the Open Banking concept which focuses on payments and the sharing of bank account data.

The objective of open finance is to facilitate the provision of new financial products and services building on data combination and aggregation, that may better serve customer needs in areas such as financial advice, pension preparation, insurance etc…, enhance customer experience and empower customers to make more informed financial decisions.

In the EU, open finance concepts were first implemented in the payments area and for bank accounts with the Payments Service Directive (PSD2) framework, currently under review.

The Commission published in June 2023 a framework for Financial Data Access (FIDA) aiming to promote the development of open finance with requirements and incentives for data holders to share data in an efficient and standardised way, while allowing customers to retain control on their data in order to preserve data privacy and safety. In terms of scope, FIDA concerns all financial data except payment data which is covered by PDS2 and sensitive data such as creditworthiness and life and health insurance data.

This framework will build on the data sharing requirements of GDPR and the EU data strategy framework (EU Data Act, Data Governance Act), also taking into account the lessons learned from the PSD2.