2018-11-27
Seeking to promote innovation in the financial sector, the Bank of Lithuania has initiated a public consultation to find out the opinion of current and future financial market participants and other stakeholders about the need and conditions for Open Banking in Lithuania.
‘This August important changes to payment service regulation that opened up more opportunities for companies providing payment initiation and account informations services have come into force. However, the Bank of Lithuania takes a broader view to Open Banking: innovation is on the rise, thus, to take full advantage of every available opportunity we need to know what, in the opinion of market participants and the general public, are the obstacles, requirements and perspectives of this field and to initiate changes accordingly,’ said Marius Jurgilas, Member of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania.
The opinion on the perspectives of Open Banking in Lithuania can be provided via the Bank of Lithuania questionnaire until 25 January 2019 (to be submitted via email).
Open Banking is an emerging term in the field of FinTech that refers to the use of the application programming interfaces (APIs) to develop various financial and information services for financial market participants based on data of banks and other financial institutions.
Open Banking offers not only management of personal or a company’s finances, but also automated decision-making technologies to identify the most favourable investment and least expensive loan offers. To further develop Open Banking, companies providing these services need to have a clear legal environment and receive necessary information in a standardised and secure manner.
At present, Open Banking has already been implemented or is to be implemented in 10 jurisdictions (Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland). They associate the potential benefits of Open Banking with the development of FinTech sector and greater competition in the financial sector.
The Bank of Lithuania can contribute to the development of Open Banking in our country by offering various services from access to its relevant data via APIs to opportunities for testing innovative solutions in the Bank’s regulatory sandbox.
Developing and maintaining environment conducive to competition and promotion of innovations in the financial sector is one of the Bank of Lithuania’s strategic directions for 2017-2020.