Open Finance: The FCA Maps Out a Smart Data Future

The FCA published Open finance: Our vision for a smart data future on 14 April 2026, which is its roadmap for facilitating the expansion of open finance in the UK between now and 2030. The approach outlined in the roadmap aims to extend secure, consent-based data sharing to a wider range of financial products. The initiative builds on the UK’s successful implementation of open banking, which the FCA’s paper states now has 145 active third party providers, facilitating approximately 17 million active users. While open banking is limited to payments data, open finance would extend the same principles to products such as mortgages, SME lending, investments, pensions, insurance, savings, credit and debt management. 

Open finance has the potential to enable customers to more easily access their data and share it with their financial services providers. By giving consumers and businesses greater control over their data, it could produce more personalised, competitive and inclusive products. The FCA cites research by Open Banking Limited and EY suggesting the combined open banking and open finance economic impact could reach £7.4 billion per year within five years, and McKinsey's estimate that open finance alone could support growth of up to 1 to 1.5% of UK GDP by 2030. AI and tokenisation are flagged as key amplifiers, with open finance positioned as the foundation for the burgeoning agentic commerce sector.

The paper is a vision and roadmap rather than a formal consultation; the FCA has confirmed that a formal discussion paper on its first open finance scheme will follow in Q4 2026, with SME credit and mortgages as its initial high-impact priorities. The roadmap runs alongside the FCA's parallel open banking workstream, where the FCA will consult on the long-term regulatory framework for open banking before the end of 2026. The FCA has acknowledged a number of key barriers that will need to be overcome to implement its vision – including data privacy risks and businesses’ concerns about the costs of implementation – making industry engagement particularly important from an early stage. 

Vision: three outcomes

The FCA's stated vision is to build a smart data economy that works for everyone. It identifies three outcomes that will determine success: (i) increased innovation and competition, with lower barriers to entry, reduced switching costs and new product categories (including agentic commerce); (ii) inclusive consumer and SME outcomes, including faster credit decisions, personalised investment, earlier identification of vulnerability (e.g. borrowers in financial difficulty) and reduced fraud and financial crime; and (iii) enhanced economic growth through better capital allocation for SMEs, enabling consumers to make better financial decisions and supporting risk allocation and mitigation. The FCA also sees opportunities for UK firms to export their open finance technology and services, which would contribute directly to growth and could lead to advantages for UK-based firms and attract increased foreign investment.

Collaborating with industry to develop open finance

The FCA's roadmap to 2030 emphasises collaboration with industry, consumer groups, academia and technical experts, leveraging its Innovation Hub and the Smart Data Accelerator (launched September 2025). Key 2026 milestones include: 

1. TechSprints in Q1 and Q4 2026, building on the SME lending and mortgages TechSprints run from November 2025 to February 2026 using synthetic data (and which produced innovations including AI-enhanced affordability assessment tools for mortgages, reusable data packages for loan applications and AI-assisted business planning for SMEs);
2. PolicySprint in Q2 2026 to help build consensus on where open finance can improve consumer journeys and outcomes, and to understand what industry needs from the future framework;
3. FCA-led PRISM Taskforce (Prioritisation and Real-world Insights Selection Matrix) bringing together industry, consumer groups, academia and technical experts, reporting by Q3 2026; and
4. Discussion paper on the first open finance scheme in Q4 2026, which will include joint FCA and HM Treasury proposals for introducing new smart data schemes under the Data (Use and Access Act); that discussion paper will be followed by further work with HM Treasury to draft options for a long-term regulatory framework in 2027. 

The paper outlines the FCA’s involvement in various cross-regulator initiatives, including: (i) the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum on the Consumer Duty and its interactions with data protection; (ii) the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology’s coalition for SME Access to Credit; and (iii) participation in Project Aperta, a Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub Hong Kong project, which is aimed at reducing frictions and costs in global finance.

Key roadmap phases

The roadmap sets out a phased approach divided into three broad stages:

1. 2026: the focus is on collaboration with industry and prioritisation of future workstreams.
2. 2027: the FCA will shift to design and coordination, including working with HM Treasury on options for a long-term regulatory framework for open finance.
3. 2028 to 2030: the FCA’s efforts will be directed towards scaling up the framework, with new schemes delivered on a recurring cycle of use-case identification, framework design, testing, consultation and launch.

Next steps

As this is a roadmap, rather than a specific consultation paper or any final rules, there are no specific actions for firms to take at present, but the FCA is clear that it will be seeking engagement from industry.