Ellie Duncan wrapped up Day 1 of the Open Banking Expo, London conference with Jim Wadsworth, Thomas Egner, and Robert Sullivan looking at the challenges and opportunities facing the market under the proposed PSD3/PSR/FIDA package.

Key take-outs from the session: 

• PSD1 laid the foundations for cross-border; PSD2 looked at innovation; PSD3, the PSR and FIDA (the European Commission’s payment services and financial data access package) will build a stable environment for the ecosystem.
• FIDA is to open finance what PSD2 was for open banking. It is ambitious in scope and will introduce a much broader licensing programme than PSD2.
• Where FIDA deviates from PSD2, is that it takes a scheme-based approach with data owners and data recipients having to join a scheme in order to participate. 
• Under the new FIDA proposals, data holders will be able to charge data users for access to data, but the development of these commercial models will be ‘for the good of the market’. 
• The UK and Europe are no longer leading the charge. They both now need to spend time building opportunities rather than waiting for the regulators to ‘instruct’. 
• Regulators play a difficult role balancing principles with prescriptiveness in order to fuel innovation. 
• There is plenty of room for both financial institutions and fintechs to seize the opportunity, but this requires companies to be brave and to test ideas ahead of regulatory change. 
• To be successful, there needs to be a level of trust between the regulator and the regulated and a willingness of the regulator to listen to the market.