Together with various financial sector players, including SIX, the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) has compiled an overview of open banking. “It intends,” reads the document’s foreword, “to create the conditions for facilitated cooperation between banks and third party providers, and further advance the market-driven implementation of open banking in Switzerland.”
The advantages of open banking are obvious and unanimously agreed upon. The question is not so much as to “what” but as to “how” – and there are very different approaches here. The discussions surrounding open banking have been extremely intense, thanks not least to the regulations on data exchange in the EU and in countries outside Europe. Switzerland is showing that it can work without regulations, but on free competition.
The SBA is convinced that banks, thanks to their extensive customer base and the trust placed in them, are well placed to lead the way in a cross-sector ecosystem. They can also play a key role in defining data protection, rules for the use of data, application programming interface standards and infrastructure. Specifically, the guideline revolves around three points:
- Framework – freedom of contract and market-driven solutions
- Strategy – positioning within to open banking
- Infrastructure – standardizing of application programming interfaces (APIs)
The document therefore also provides an important basis for discussions about the further development of open banking in Switzerland. The SBA states: “The Swiss financial center therefore has a unique opportunity to shape the future financial ecosystem by acting in concert with the key players.”