Open finance aims to build on the idea of open banking and is characterized by CFIT CEO Ezechi Britton MBE as the next "great opportunity for our economy."

Financial organizations securely provide their clients' transactional data to dependable third parties through open banking. The goal of open finance is to expand this sharing to cover other data, such a person's savings, credit history, pensions, and more.

The taskforce, which was announced by Bim Afolami, the Economic Secretary to the UK Treasury, during this year's Innovate Finance Global Summit (IFGS) in London, will build on the foundation established and suggestions offered by the CFIT in its Blueprint Report, which was published in February 2024. This involves looking at safe ways to open financial data so that small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) can get better loans.

In addition to finding and promoting new use cases for open finance, the taskforce will "identify and prioritise" which data sets should be unlocked and whose APIs are most suited to enable enhanced availability of SME funding.

The government project will also seek to identify "commercially viable approaches" that can be used to "incentivize" businesses to securely exchange their financial data.

The CFIT is a private sector-led organization that was established early last year with the goal of using industry knowledge and fostering expansion in the UK fintech market.

Listen to our audio conversation with Charlotte Crosswell OBE, the chair of the body, to learn more about the CFIT and its many activities. What the FinTech?