Open Banking's Next Phase: AI, Inclusion and Collaboration
Open banking has transformed financial services as we know it, but its true potential remains largely untapped.
As the technology matures, questions emerge about how to unlock new revenue streams, address consumer adoption barriers and harness AI to make financial data truly actionable.
In this executive roundtable, three industry leaders share their vision for open banking’s evolution. Erick Watson, CEO of Randamu, brings expertise in Web3 and cryptographic coordination.
Krishna Subramanyan, CEO of Bruc Bond, offers insights on platform-based infrastructure and regulatory compliance. James Lynn, CEO of Currensea, provides perspective on consumer-focused financial products and strategic partnerships.
How do you see open banking evolving beyond payments and account aggregation?
Erick Watson, CEO of Randamu
Open banking is on the verge of becoming a broader coordination layer for financial experiences, not just a data-pulling mechanism.
As interoperability frameworks mature, mirroring developments in Web3, we’ll see banks and fintechs monetising access to financial identities, real-time credit scoring and programmable workflows.
Think of open banking as the backbone for secure, event-driven automation: a bill gets paid, and a savings allocation triggers instantly across multiple platforms. The future lies in secure, permissioned coordination across data silos, and when applied to finance, it unlocks new, high-margin services grounded in trust, automation and personalisation.
Krishna Subramanyan, CEO, Bruc Bond
Open banking needs to move into platform-based infrastructure that addresses challenges like multi-ledger reconciliation, automation of respective regulatory workflow, cater to multiple entity types and the tiered fee logic used by banks and fintechs today.
By building modular systems that handle hierarchy, fee setup, reconciliation and compliance – all in one cohesive platform – we can unlock new revenue opportunities. This approach enables the delivery of richer, more contextual services across various domains, including corporate banking and cross-border payments.
James Lynn, CEO, Currensea
Open banking can unlock access to enhanced value for money through personalised financial products, whether that's eliminating bank fees or offering perks through reward schemes.
For example, Currensea uses open banking to automatically connect its travel debit card with a user's existing bank account while offering them the best foreign exchange rates on the market.
Through the power of open banking, customers never need to top-up cards or juggle funds as people can spend directly from their everyday bank accounts without any of the hassle of opening a new account.
There is a growing trend of corporates also leveraging the benefits of open banking in order to diversify their offering to customers and give them a competitive edge.
For example, open banking technology was vital in powering Currensea’s recent co-branded card launch with Hilton.
This world-first hotel debit card last year, enables Hilton’s loyalty programme members to spend directly from their existing bank account to collect points which can be redeemed on hotel stays and holiday experiences.
What are the biggest barriers preventing widespread consumer adoption of open banking services?
"Open banking is on the verge of becoming a broader coordination layer"
Erick Watson, CEO of Randamu
The biggest barrier is still trust. Consumers remain wary of granting broad access to their financial data, especially when the incentives are unclear or the consent models seem opaque.
Another friction point is fragmented user experience (UX): too many interfaces and too little interoperability.
To overcome this, the industry needs to lead with value, rather than relying on technical jargon. Demonstrate tangible improvements such as faster loan approvals, smarter budgeting, or real-time fraud prevention and adoption will follow.
Embedding verifiable consent protocols and data minimisation frameworks, similar to what’s done in Web3 privacy tooling, can also make open banking feel safer by design.
Krishna Subramanyan, CEO, Bruc Bond
The real blocker is not awareness, it’s the inability of backend systems to scale. A seamless front-end experience is ineffective if the underlying systems cannot handle compliance, fee structures, and account hierarchies at scale.
To overcome this, we must build seamless, end-to-end platforms engineered for operational resilience and regulatory compliance, ensuring trust and reliability.
James Lynn, CEO, Currensea
The UK was a genuine world-leader in open banking for many years but there is a danger of the industry resting on its laurels as other countries begin to gain ground, and in some areas, begin to overtake the UK.
Regulators must ensure they are stepping up efforts to sustain progress and support fintech innovation whilst also meeting their aim to keep customers safe.
Work must also be done to boost public awareness of the value of open banking.
Many consumers are unaware of the financial opportunities open banking offers and some remain wary of sharing their data with unknown third parties.
Collaboration is key to overcoming these barriers while providing wider benefits to the industry too. Though fintechs should also look beyond financial institutions when considering partnerships.
Continued collaboration will further strengthen the UK’s position as a world leader in fintech innovation and deliver enhanced customer value.
How should financial institutions balance collaboration with fintechs versus building competitive in-house capabilities?
Krishna Subramanyan, CEO, Bruc Bond
The real blocker is not awareness, it’s the inability of backend systems to scale. A seamless front-end experience is ineffective if the underlying systems cannot handle compliance, fee structures, and account hierarchies at scale.
To overcome this, we must build seamless, end-to-end platforms engineered for operational resilience and regulatory compliance, ensuring trust and reliability.
James Lynn, CEO, Currensea
The UK was a genuine world-leader in open banking for many years but there is a danger of the industry resting on its laurels as other countries begin to gain ground, and in some areas, begin to overtake the UK.
Regulators must ensure they are stepping up efforts to sustain progress and support fintech innovation whilst also meeting their aim to keep customers safe.
Work must also be done to boost public awareness of the value of open banking.
Many consumers are unaware of the financial opportunities open banking offers and some remain wary of sharing their data with unknown third parties.
Collaboration is key to overcoming these barriers while providing wider benefits to the industry too. Though fintechs should also look beyond financial institutions when considering partnerships.
Continued collaboration will further strengthen the UK’s position as a world leader in fintech innovation and deliver enhanced customer value.
How should financial institutions balance collaboration with fintechs versus building competitive in-house capabilities?
"The real blocker is not awareness; it's the inability of backend systems to scale"
Erick Watson, CEO of Randamu
Banks need to treat fintech partnerships less as a threat and more as a force multiplier. No institution can move fast enough on its own, especially when the playing field is increasingly shaped by developers, not just regulators.
That said, the ideal strategy is composability: invest in core infrastructure and data governance in-house, but plug into nimble, specialised fintech layers for speed and innovation.
Krishna Subramanyan, CEO, Bruc Bond
Rather than duplicating efforts or competing head-to-head, institutions and fintechs should focus on co-developing shared infrastructure.
When core functions like fee management, operational controls and compliance processes are unified in a central platform, fintechs can innovate on customer experience, while banks provide the stability, trust and reach. It’s a model that promotes efficiency and accelerates collective progress.
James Lynn, CEO, Currensea
Indeed, as financial services become increasingly digitised, financial institutions like banks are continually leveraging partnerships with innovative fintechs to offer more agile, personalised services.
Fintechs can benefit from the trust and reliability of household banking names whilst scaling at pace, as these partnerships ensure their innovative solutions reach a much wider customer base.
What role should AI and machine learning play in making open banking data more actionable?
Erick Watson, CEO of Randamu
AI should be used not just for predictive analytics, but to enable context-aware automation. Imagine a financial agent that knows when to refinance your mortgage, renegotiate a subscription or rebalance your portfolio, all based solely on your open banking data and expressed preferences.
To make this safe, explainable AI is critical, especially when tied to high-stakes decisions. We're already exploring how verifiable computing and decentralised oracles in Web3 can bring trust to AI outputs, concepts that also have crossover value here.
Data becomes truly actionable only when it's processed transparently and in a way users can audit and override.
Krishna Subramanyan, CEO, Bruc Bond
A platform-first strategy naturally invites data-driven automation. For example, a platform using ML can automatically flag anomalous transaction patterns, prevent fraud before it scales, automate reconciliation, monitor risk in real-time and trigger compliance checks as transactions flow.
AI is the key to turning raw banking data into actionable and scalable insights. These technologies don't replace human oversight but instead make scalable, intelligent decision-making possible at speed.
How can the industry ensure that open banking delivers on its promise of financial inclusion?
"The UK was a genuine world-leader in open banking for many years"
Erick Watson, CEO of Randamu
Financial inclusion and privacy are often seen as a trade-off, but they don’t have to be. The industry must adopt security architectures that are inherently user-centric.
For example, zero-knowledge proofs and threshold cryptography can allow users to verify income or spending patterns without exposing raw data.
Regulators should also mandate interoperability across financial institutions, so users aren't locked out simply because of where they bank. Inclusion means control and that starts with providing users with granular, portable access to their own financial footprint.
Krishna Subramanyan, CEO, Bruc Bond
Financial inclusion must be built into the architecture, not added afterwards. When platforms are designed with transparency, embedded compliance and privacy by default, it becomes possible to extend trusted financial services to SMEs and underserved populations, without compromising security. Inclusion and trust go together, and both require deep infrastructure commitment.
What lessons from open banking implementation should inform the development of open finance and broader data sharing initiatives?
Erick Watson, CEO of Randamu
The biggest lesson is that data access alone isn't enough. What matters is coordination, context, and consent. Open banking should be viewed as the beginning of a larger movement toward user-sovereign data exchange.
As we move into open finance and even cross-sectoral models like open health or open energy, we need to build systems where policy logic is separate from infrastructure and where rules are verifiable and portable.
Shared standards and dynamic governance layers can enable this at scale, without compromising on control or security.
Krishna Subramanyan, CEO, Bruc Bond
Infrastructure integrity is non-negotiable. As we move toward open finance expanding into pensions, insurance, or ESG data sharing, success hinges on deeply integrated, compliant platforms.
Ad‑hoc API implementations won’t scale. What is needed is a foundation of interoperable, compliant, and transparent systems that support long-term scalability and fairness.
Open banking’s future lies in unified, scalable platforms with embedded compliance, operational intelligence and AI-powered insights.
Built collaboratively, these platforms will deliver inclusive, secure ecosystems, serving as the backbone for all future open finance initiatives.