Enhancing Open Banking with Personalisation Data Access

Table of Contents

• 1. Personalisation data access enhances Open Banking value
• 2. The Shift to Consumer-Driven Banking in Canada
• 3. Understanding Data Access as an Enabler
• 4. Unlocking Value Through Open Banking Experiences
• 5. Customer-Centric Financial Solutions: Beyond APIs
• 6. Identifying Emotional Pain Points for Success
• 7. The Role of Personalisation in Financial Services
• 8. Building Continuous Value Through Relevant Insights
• 9. Treating Personalisation as a Core Capability
• 10. The Future of Open Banking Personalization
• 10.1 Embracing Consumer-Centric Approaches
• 10.2 Navigating Challenges for Sustainable Growth

---

Personalisation data access enhances Open Banking value

• Canada’s Consumer-Driven Banking is moving from readiness to delivery, shifting attention from frameworks to execution.
• Data access is an enabler—not the end goal; value is created in the experience layer customers actually feel.
• Adoption rises when the value exchange is immediate and tangible (spot rising bills, avoid charges, find better deals).
• Meaningful personalisation starts with emotional pain points and is built through small, testable experiences.
• The winners will treat personalisation as a core capability, delivering relevant insights continuously across channels.

Consent-Driven Data, Real Value
– Enabler: secure, consumer-consented data access (APIs, standards, connectivity)
– Outcome: customer value customers can feel (clarity, fewer surprises, less stress, better decisions)
– Proof of value: “Would I connect my accounts for this—today?”
– Practical implication: measure success by adoption + sustained engagement + avoided fees/friction, not just connections established

Context: This article synthesizes the perspective and examples presented by Craig Wills (Hi Mum! Said Dad) in an Open Banking Expo Canada piece on moving from Open Banking data access to meaningful personalisation.

The Shift to Consumer-Driven Banking in Canada

Consumer-Driven Banking in Canada has been “long in the making” and is now moving into delivery. That timing matters because it changes what good looks like. In early phases, the industry tends to obsess over frameworks, readiness checklists, and the mechanics of sharing data. As delivery begins, the conversation becomes less about whether data can move and more about whether it matters—to customers, to adoption, and to outcomes.

From Consent to Delivery
Canada’s shift from readiness → delivery changes the priority stack:
– Then: governance, standards, participation, “can we connect?”
– Now: product execution, trust-building, “what do we ship first that earns consent?”
– What changes in practice: teams need a short path from consent → first value, plus a way to learn in-market without waiting for ecosystem perfection.

That shift is already visible in the run-up to Open Banking Expo Canada 2026, where the focus is moving from infrastructure and governance to execution. The practical question for banks, fintechs, and partners becomes: what do you build first, and how do you prove value quickly enough that customers choose to participate?

Experience from more mature Open Banking markets offers a clear warning and a clear opportunity. Teams that treat Consumer-Driven Banking as a technical rollout risk shipping “compliant” capabilities that customers barely notice. Teams that treat it as a product and experience transformation can use consented data to deliver guidance that feels clearer, easier, and more secure in everyday life.

Canada’s opportunity is not simply to replicate account aggregation. It is to use Open Banking to support financial health in ways that feel accessible—potentially democratizing financial advice rather than reserving it for customers who already have time, confidence, or wealth. The institutions that embed that mindset early won’t just adapt to Consumer-Driven Banking; they’ll shape how Canadians experience it.

Understanding Data Access as an Enabler

A recurring lesson from Open Banking rollouts in the UK and across Europe is that data access is an enabler, not an outcome.

In this context, “data access” refers to secure, consumer-consented sharing of financial data via standardized APIs; “personalisation” is what you build on top of that access—tailored guidance and experiences that feel immediately useful to the customer.
APIs, standards, and connectivity are necessary—but they are not what customers wake up wanting. Customers don’t care about the sophistication of the plumbing. They care about whether their financial lives feel less confusing, less stressful, and more under control.

This distinction is more than semantics. If data access is treated as the finish line, teams optimize for connectivity metrics and technical milestones. If it’s treated as an enabler, teams optimize for customer outcomes: fewer fees, earlier warnings, better decisions, and reduced anxiety.

Open Banking data—shared securely and with consumer consent—creates the possibility of personalization at a level traditional banking struggles to match. Transaction histories, income patterns, and spending behaviors can be analyzed to generate tailored insights and recommendations. But the hard part is not merely obtaining the data. The hard part is translating it into something a customer can understand quickly, trust immediately, and act on confidently.

That translation requires strategy, design, and execution—not just infrastructure. It also requires clarity: customers will share data when the benefit is tangible and timely. When the benefit feels abstract or overly complex, hesitation increases, even if the underlying data-sharing mechanism is secure and technically elegant.

Unlocking Value Through Open Banking Experiences

In practice, the value of Open Banking will be defined by the experiences it unlocks. The “experience layer” is where customers decide whether Consumer-Driven Banking is worth it, because that’s where they feel the payoff—or the friction.

A concrete example comes from the work to design and build Snoop’s Open Banking app from the ground up.

The adoption dynamic described here hinges on a simple exchange: customers choose to connect accounts when they can see a clear, immediate benefit from doing so.
One insight became central: customers were willing to connect their bank accounts and engage when the value was clear and immediate. If an insight helped them spot rising bills, avoid unnecessary charges, or find a better deal on everyday expenses, the benefit felt tangible—and the data connection made sense. When the value felt abstract, adoption suffered.

Felt Benefits Drive Adoption
What the Snoop example makes concrete (in plain product terms):
– Trigger: a customer is asked to connect accounts (a trust + effort moment)
– Value that worked: immediate, everyday wins (spot rising bills, avoid charges, find better deals)
– Value that didn’t: abstract or overly complex promises
– Practical takeaway: adoption follows felt benefit, not infrastructure sophistication

That behavioral insight is crucial for Canada. It suggests that adoption doesn’t hinge on how sophisticated the infrastructure is, but on whether the experience solves something real. Open Banking can be positioned as a technical revolution, but it will be adopted as a practical one: “Does this help me today?”

This is also where financial health narratives become actionable. Open Banking can support financial guidance that is more personalized and more timely than generic content or annual reviews. But guidance only becomes “real” when it shows up in the moments that matter—when a bill spikes, when cash flow tightens, when a customer is about to incur a fee, or when a better option is available.

The institutions that win will be those that turn access into guidance—without overwhelming users with complexity.

Customer-Centric Financial Solutions: Beyond APIs

Customer-centric Open Banking is not an API strategy; it’s a journey strategy. The customer doesn’t experience “data sharing.” They experience a set of moments: onboarding, consent, first insight, ongoing nudges, and the ability to act. If any of those moments feel confusing or self-serving, trust erodes.

From Consent to Action
A practical journey to design (with checkpoints):
1) Consent ask → explain the “why” in one sentence (checkpoint: can a customer repeat the benefit back?)
2) Connect accounts → keep steps minimal (checkpoint: drop-off points are instrumented)
3) First insight → deliver something immediate and specific (checkpoint: time-to-first-insight is minutes/days, not weeks)
4) Ongoing nudges → only when there’s a meaningful change (checkpoint: users can tune frequency or pause)
5) Action → make the next step obvious (checkpoint: the action is doable in-app or with a clear handoff)
6) Trust loop → remind users what’s shared and let them revoke easily (checkpoint: revocation is as easy as connection)

That’s why “beyond APIs” is the right framing. APIs are the mechanism, but customer-centricity is the discipline of designing the experience so it is obvious, immediate, and repeatable. The goal is not to show customers more data; it’s to help them make better decisions with less effort.

In mature markets, one of the clearest patterns is that customers engage when the product reduces friction or anxiety. That can mean highlighting a rising bill before it becomes a surprise, flagging avoidable charges, or surfacing a better deal on everyday expenses. These are not exotic use cases; they are everyday problems—precisely why they drive adoption.

Customer-centric solutions also require rethinking execution. Rather than waiting for a “fully mature ecosystem,” teams can start with small, testable experiences with real users. Live learning often surfaces more insight than months of internal alignment, because it reveals what customers actually understand, what they ignore, and what they trust.

In other words: build less, learn faster. Consumer-Driven Banking is a chance to redesign how financial services feel. But that redesign only happens when organizations treat experience as the product—not as a wrapper around the product.

Identifying Emotional Pain Points for Success

Meaningful personalization starts with emotional pain points, not data fields. Customers rarely describe their needs as “I want better transaction categorization.” They describe them as: “I’m worried about money,” “I don’t know where it goes,” “I’m trying to save,” “I’m drowning in debt,” or “I need to plan ahead.”

The research points to common pain points that can anchor Open Banking experiences: budgeting, saving, managing debt, and planning ahead. The practical method is to start there—then work backwards to determine where Open Banking data can reduce friction or anxiety.

From Pain Point to Experience
Use this to turn a pain point into a testable Open Banking experience:
– Name the emotion + job-to-be-done (e.g., “I’m anxious about bills creeping up”)
– Identify the data signals (e.g., recurring merchants, bill amount changes, income timing)
– Pick the moment (e.g., when a bill increases vs after it’s paid)
– Define the “help” in one sentence (e.g., “Your energy bill rose 18%—want to compare providers?”)
– Decide the action path (in-app switch, call-to-action, or simple next step)
– Set a success measure (consent conversion, avoided fee/charge, repeat engagement, opt-out rate)
– Add a trust check (what’s shared, why, and how to stop sharing—made obvious)

This approach changes how teams prioritize. Instead of asking, “What data can we access?” they ask, “What moment are we trying to improve?” That moment might be a customer realizing their bills are rising or noticing they’re paying unnecessary charges. The data becomes a means to a human end.

It also changes how success is measured. If the goal is to reduce anxiety, the experience must be simple enough to understand quickly and credible enough to trust. If the goal is to reduce friction, the experience must make the next step obvious—without forcing customers to decode financial jargon.

Crucially, progress doesn’t require perfection. Banks and fintechs don’t need to wait for every participant, every standard, or every edge case to be solved before testing. These tests can validate whether a pain point is real, whether the insight is useful, and whether the value is strong enough to earn consent.

The Role of Personalisation in Financial Services

Personalisation is increasingly a differentiator in financial services because it can turn generic products into relevant guidance. Using consumer-permissioned data, organizations can tailor insights and recommendations based on transaction history, income patterns, and spending behavior—moving from one-size-fits-all messaging to context-aware support.

This can improve customer experience in a straightforward way: customers feel understood when the service reflects their reality. Research cited in the broader analysis suggests consumers expect personalized interactions and are more likely to recommend institutions that provide tailored experiences. That expectation raises the bar for Open Banking experiences: if the insight is generic, customers will question why they shared data at all.

Trust and Personalization Expectations
A couple of widely cited signals on expectations and trust:
– Personalization expectations: McKinsey has reported that 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions and 78% are more likely to recommend brands that personalize (as summarized by StudioSpace, 2026).
– Security priority: a Visa consumer survey has been cited as finding 91% of consumers prioritize data security when engaging with financial services (as referenced in a Thales analysis, 2025).
Takeaway for Open Banking experiences: the “value exchange” must be clear and the security/consent experience must feel simple and in-control.

Personalisation also has broader implications. Open Banking data can support more inclusive decisioning by enabling assessments based on cash flow and other real-world signals, rather than relying only on traditional measures. And it can enable more timely, real-time insights—helping customers respond to financial stress or opportunities as they happen, not weeks later.

But personalisation comes with responsibilities. Trust is foundational, and consumers prioritize data security. Consent must be transparent, easy to understand, and easy to revoke. Without that, even the best personalization will struggle to scale because customers will hesitate to connect accounts or continue sharing data.

The key point is that personalisation is not a “feature.” It is a way of operating: using data to deliver guidance that is relevant, timely, and clearly beneficial—while respecting consent and maintaining trust.

Building Continuous Value Through Relevant Insights

One of the most important reframes in the research is that personalisation isn’t a single screen or feature. It’s about delivering relevant insights across moments and channels so value is connected, purposeful, and continuous.

Always-On Relevance Loop
An “always-on relevance” loop teams can implement:
1) Trigger: detect a meaningful change (bill spike, low balance risk, unusual fee)
2) Insight: state what changed in plain language
3) Explanation: show the minimum “why” (what data pattern drove it)
4) Action: offer one clear next step
5) Feedback: capture “helpful/not helpful” + outcome (did they act?)
Checkpoint: if users can’t explain the insight or don’t act repeatedly, reduce frequency and tighten the value.

That continuity is what turns Open Banking from a one-time novelty into an ongoing relationship. A customer might connect accounts because they want to spot rising bills or avoid charges. But they stay engaged when the service continues to surface useful, understandable insights—without demanding constant attention.

This is also where many products fail: they deliver a strong first impression, then fade into noise. Continuous value requires a cadence of relevance. The insight must arrive at the right time, in the right place, with the right level of explanation. Too little, and it feels pointless. Too much, and it feels overwhelming.

The research suggests a practical path: start small and test in live environments. Real users will quickly reveal whether an insight is genuinely helpful or merely interesting. They will also reveal whether the product is reducing friction and anxiety—or accidentally creating more of both.

Continuous value also depends on clarity. Customers don’t care about the underlying sophistication; they care whether their financial lives feel clearer, easier, and more secure. That means insights should be framed in plain language and tied to actions customers can take—especially when the benefit is immediate and tangible.

In Canada’s execution phase, the organizations that build this “always-on relevance” will define what Consumer-Driven Banking feels like day to day.

Treating Personalisation as a Core Capability

The most successful teams treat personalisation as a capability, not a campaign. A campaign has a launch date and a message. A capability is something the organization can do repeatedly: identify needs, test solutions, learn from behavior, and improve the experience over time.

Building Sustainable Product Capability
What “capability” means in practice (beyond a launch):
– People: product + design + data + risk/privacy working as one team on customer outcomes
– Process: test-and-learn cadence (ship small, measure, iterate) with clear decision rights
– Data: consented data quality, categorization, and explainability that supports user trust
– Measurement: outcome metrics (adoption, retention, avoided fees/friction) plus trust metrics (opt-out, complaint signals)

This matters because Consumer-Driven Banking is not a one-and-done rollout. It is a shift in how financial services are designed and delivered. Teams that start small, test, and iterate quickly can build confidence internally as fast as they build value externally.

Treating personalisation as a capability also forces cross-functional alignment. It’s not only a product problem or a data problem. It requires strategy (what outcomes matter), design (how value is communicated), and execution (how insights are delivered reliably). And it requires keeping customers at the heart of every journey, because that value is what drives consent and adoption.

The research is blunt about what comes next: Canada’s next phase isn’t about proving that data can move; it’s about proving that it can matter. Institutions that embed that mindset early won’t just comply with Consumer-Driven Banking—they’ll shape the market’s expectations for what “good” looks like.

The Future of Open Banking Personalization

Embracing Consumer-Centric Approaches

The future direction is clear: Open Banking will be judged by consumer outcomes, not industry architecture. As Canada moves into delivery, the winning approach will be to design experiences that make everyday financial life feel clearer, easier, and more secure.

That means treating consent as a clear benefit, not a checkbox. Customers connect accounts when the benefit is immediate and tangible—spotting rising bills, avoiding unnecessary charges, or finding better deals. Those are the kinds of practical wins that can make Consumer-Driven Banking feel like progress rather than process.

It also means building from emotional pain points outward. Budgeting, saving, managing debt, and planning ahead are not just categories; they are sources of stress and uncertainty. Open Banking data becomes powerful when it reduces that stress in specific moments, with guidance that is understandable and actionable.

Navigating Challenges for Sustainable Growth

Key Themes in Open Banking
Near-term themes shaping Open Banking personalization:
– Trust and control: clearer consent, easy revocation, and security that feels visible in-product
– Interoperability: uneven data quality/coverage can break experiences unless products degrade gracefully
– Legacy constraints: real-time insights often require modernization behind the scenes
– Execution advantage: teams that run small live tests learn faster than teams waiting for “perfect” ecosystem conditions

Sustainable growth depends on trust, clarity, and execution discipline. Consumers prioritize data security, so transparency in how data is used—and the ability to revoke consent—must be central to product design, not buried in policy language.

There are also operational challenges that can slow progress, including interoperability and legacy infrastructure constraints. But the research suggests organizations don’t need to wait for perfection to begin learning. Small, testable experiences in live environments can surface the insights that matter most—what customers value, what they ignore, and what makes them hesitate.

Ultimately, the challenge is not access. It’s meaning. The institutions that succeed will be those that turn Open Banking data into continuous, relevant guidance—proving, day after day, that Consumer-Driven Banking is not just possible, but worthwhile.

This perspective is shaped by Martin Weidemann’s work building and scaling technology-driven businesses in regulated environments (including fintech and payments), where adoption consistently depends less on infrastructure and more on delivering clear, trusted customer outcomes.

This article reflects publicly available information and cited summaries available at the time of writing. Percentages drawn from third-party sources may differ depending on study design, country, and time period. Open Banking product, regulatory, and ecosystem details may change as standards and participation evolve, so updates may be needed.