ANZ forms open banking partnership

Frollo – which is owned by technology solutions provider NextGen.Net – has announced that the major bank has partnered with it for access to open banking data.

According to Frollo, ANZ will use its Consumer Data Right (CDR) gateway to receive consumers’ financial data from other data holders as a data recipient.

However, at this point, ANZ is a data holder rather than a data recipient under the open banking regime, which means that it currently holds consumer data.

Accredited data recipients (ADR) on the other hand can use a consumer’s real data (after a rigorous consent process has occurred) to provide product comparisons, specific service or products, or create new products or services.

An ANZ spokesperson told Mortgage Business that the initial technical work with Frollo around CDR and the open banking regime would assist the major bank “determine better expectations around when we might apply to become a data recipient”.

The major bank did not provide a time frame around when it might seek to become a data recipient under CDR.

The spokesperson said: “We are developing a range of data capabilities across the bank as part of our longer-term approach. Working on Frollo’s existing platform capabilities allows us to accelerate a discovery phase on CDR initial use cases.”

According to Frollo, its open banking platform assists businesses with fast-tracking the process of becoming an ADR. It added that it has had over 7 million open banking application programming interface (API) calls to date, and has been responsible for over 95 per cent of open banking activity so far in Australia.

Commenting on Frollo’s partnership with ANZ, founder and CEO Gareth Gumbley said: “We’re proud to be supporting ANZ on their open banking journey. We’ve worked closely with them over the past 18 months on the data holder side, testing the ecosystem and improving reliability.

“As one of Australia’s biggest banks, ANZ is in a great position to leverage the opportunities the CDR offers as a data recipient.”

ANZ open banking lead Richard Hough said that ANZ has chosen to partner with Frollo due to its “proven” accreditation and experience as a data recipient platform with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

“We have worked with them in partnership through the go live testing process and established a trusted relationship. It’s early days for us and we’re looking forward to engaging with consumers on this important initiative.”  

Earlier this year, technology company Lakeba announced that it secured the CDR ADR for its Ezidox platform under the ACCC open banking regulations.

Ezidox will now enable its customers to collect, curate and validate personal documentation from accounts held with data holders, which are currently the major banks, while ACCC-accredited digital financial institutions can allow customers to share their personal documentation “instantly”, according to Lakeba.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is the only major bank which is currently a data recipient.

Other data recipients include Yodlee Inc, illion Open Data Solutions, and Credit Simple.

[Related: Financial Services Minister takes over CDR rule making]