And the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney did not table a spring budget, which it normally would use to outline its legislative priorities.
Natacha Boudrias, leader of the National Bank of Canada’s open banking strategy, said the industry lacks “clarity” on the future shape of consumer-driven banking. She said the spring election likely stalled movement on the file.
“We’re certainly hoping that the government is going to kick-start the effort sooner rather than later so that we don’t get stuck in a loop of consultation,” she said.
A Finance Canada official said in a media statement that the government is still committed to consumer-driven banking. “The remaining elements of the consumer-driven banking framework will be introduced at the earliest opportunity, to ensure that Canadian consumers and business can securely benefit from tools that help them reduce costs and improve their financial outcomes,” the statement says.
One Canadian bank is adopting an open-banking framework
Instead of waiting on Ottawa, the National Bank has moved forward on its own open-banking framework that lets fintechs—financial technology firms that develop apps for Canadians and businesses—essentially plug into their databases to share information securely when users give their permission.
The status quo for financial data sharing is “screen scraping,” a process that usually sees an individual share banking credentials with a third party to access the information an app needs to run.
But Boudrias said there’s no control over how much or how little data is shared through screen scraping—it’s all or nothing, making it a potential privacy nightmare.
Open banking ideally takes that firehose of data and narrows it, giving users control over the information a fintech sees and how long it can access it.
