Australia’s consumer data right legislation doesn’t just exist to open up the banking sector, it’s for making the product matching and switching process much easier in an increasingly wide range of industries.
So said Senator Jane Hume, the Federal Coalition’s Assistant Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and Financial Technology who was speaking at the Newfound Australia FinTech Market Mission launch. The Mission is a virtual event running from September 7 to the 30th designed to help leaders of high-growth FinTech businesses looking to expand their business internationally.
Introduced by the Federal government on 26 November 2017, the CDR give consumers better access to and control over their data and aids consumers in comparing and switching between products and services.
At the moment, the CDR is being phased into the banking sector. Consumer data relating to credit and debit cards, deposit accounts and transaction accounts was made available from 1 July 2020 and data relating to mortgage and personal loan data will be able to be shared after 1 November 2020.
However, the CDR isn’t just for banks.
“The CDR in Australia doesn’t just extend to open banking,” said Senator Hume. “We are the first economy that’s going to open up an industry wide consumer data right.
“We’ll roll it out aggressively to certain industries. The next cab off the rank is the energy industry, then we’ll move to telecommunications, superannuation and insurance.
The ongoing roll out of CDR would bring competitive dynamics to ‘grudge purchases’.
“The ones you put at the back of the filing cabinet because it’s too hard to change providers,”said Senator Hume. “The idea is to make that switch far easier and put the consumer entirely in control of their own data.”
Australia’s $3 trillion superannuation sector stood to gain from the CDR.
“Superannuation is one of those areas that hasn’t seen a lot of technology investment because it runs under a trust structure. Add the CDR to it and encourage people to find a provider that better suits them and you have endless opportunities opening up from great innovators who are watching with interest right now.”
Senator Hume said growing Australia’s FinTech sector and encouraging participation here from the global FinTech industry would help local consumers
“The centre of our focus is the Australian consumer, said Senator Hume. “Greater adoption of FinTech means a financial system that’s much more inclusive, more competitive with better, more tailored products that meet consumers’ needs.
“With that in mind we are focused on delivering to Australian consumers the very best products that the Australian market has to offer and the global market has to offer.
“We have a really unique FinTech ecosystem in Australia. The product offerings are incredibly diverse with tremendous organic growth. Three quarters of Australia’s FinTechs are already posting revenue and a quarter of the companies have year-on-year revenue growth of over 300 per cent.
Claire Marriot, the chief executive of Newfound APAC said the Australia Market Mission launch had brought 18 FinTechs looking to expand into Australia, 18 FinTechs looking to expand to the UK and 10 scaleups from Western Australia looking to expand to the U.K. Yesterday’s launch event had over 150 registered participants from nine countries.
“It shows a real interest of what’s happening in this COVID-19 affected market. The world has changed so much at it’s wonderful to be able to launch our first trade mission for Australian financial industries,” said Ms Marriot.
Asked why UK FinTechs should consider expanding to Australia, New Zealand and the APAC region, Ms Marriot pointed to the large size of the financial industry sector in ANZ. “With the mandated growth across the superannuation sector, everything points to growth and opportunity here.”
“FinTechs have the biggest opportunity to be the providers of innovation which the big institutions struggle to deliver,” said Ms Marriot.
“Let’s face it. Everyone is thinking about their financial fitness right now,” she said.
The virtual and interactive Newfound Australia Finech Market Mission continues today until the 30th of September 2020.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.