Open Finance: What the UK Is Proposing and Why CrestCast Says Yes

Open banking lets you share your current account data with an app you choose. Open finance would extend the same idea to the rest of a household's money: mortgages, savings, pensions, investments, credit and debt. The FCA published its plan for it on 14 April 2026. In July, HM Treasury published a consultation on payment services regulation that includes the future framework for open banking, and it closed on 6 October. CrestCast supports the direction of both.

What the FCA has said

The roadmap, "Open finance: Our vision for a smart data future", runs to 2030. Its vision is "giving people and businesses control of their data, enabling safe, consent-based data sharing, and unlocking innovation and competition". It starts with two use cases: lending to small businesses and consumers' access to mortgages.

On timing, 2026 is collaboration and testing, 2027 is design and coordination, and 2028 to 2030 is scaling up. The FCA says it will publish a discussion paper on the first open finance scheme in Q4 2026, and work with the Treasury on options for a regulatory framework in 2027.

What is law and what is not

One piece is law. Section 2 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 lets the Treasury or the Secretary of State make regulations requiring a data holder to provide customer data "to the customer, at the customer's request", or to a person "authorised by the customer to receive the data". That is a power to make regulations, not a scheme. The FCA's timetable puts its first discussion paper on an open finance scheme in Q4 2026, so no open finance scheme is in place yet.

Open banking is further on. It runs today on the Payment Services Regulations 2017 and a Competition and Markets Authority order, and the FCA puts it at "approximately 17 million active users, representing nearly 1 in 3 adults in the UK". The Treasury's consultation proposes keeping the rights of access in statute, adding a new right for variable recurring payments, and giving the FCA powers to regulate open banking under the 2025 Act. A not-for-profit body, the Future Entity, is expected to set common standards in place of Open Banking Limited. The Treasury's changes are proposals, and it has said it will publish a response.

Why CrestCast says yes

Three reasons, each from the proposals themselves. The first is control. The FCA's vision rests on consent, and the Act's wording has the same shape: data goes to someone the customer has authorised. That is how a household's financial information should move. It is also how CrestCast treats it today, since the model holds what you chose to put in it.

The second is breadth. Open banking covers payments data. Open finance would, in the FCA's words, extend "secure data sharing across a much wider range of products and services". A household forecast stands on exactly those lines: the mortgage balance and rate, the savings pots, the pensions, the other debts. Today they are typed in once and kept current by hand. Consented, structured access to them would help anyone who keeps a model of their money.

The third is the use the FCA chooses to illustrate. One of its case studies is a mortgage dashboard that uses a customer's data to "forecast different scenarios to illustrate how overpayments could help Sara pay off her mortgage 2, 5 and 10 years sooner", and sets that against her spending. The case studies are "illustrative only", but this one is a forecast, and it comes with a button that switches the overpayments off. Seeing what a decision does before you make it is the job a household forecast does.

The mortgage version of that question is one you can run today in the mortgage overpayment calculator.

What shared data cannot supply

Shared data describes where you are. A forecast also needs what you intend to do: a remortgage in fourteen months, a move to part-time, a second child. No data scheme can supply a plan that has not happened, so the household's own inputs stay at the centre however good the feeds become.

We made the same point about bank feeds in why CrestCast doesn't connect to your bank.

Three things the proposals have to get right

• Data quality. The FCA notes that financial data is "fragmented across many different firms, is not easy to access or share, and may be missing vital information". A forecast built on a feed inherits its gaps and its categorisation mistakes, so a shared figure needs a visible source and date, and the household needs a way to override it.
• Consent and revocation. The FCA says it is "exploring how to strengthen authentication, consent, and trust across open finance", and the government's Smart Data strategy points to "real-time consent controls". Sharing should be easy to see and quick to stop, and stopping should leave the household's own plan intact. The off button in the FCA's own mortgage example is the right instinct.
• A feed that breaks. Among the barriers identified by earlier FCA research, the roadmap lists technical and operational barriers "including latency and cost" and systemic "risks to network resilience". A forecast fed live goes stale without announcing it. The right behaviour is to keep the last figure, show its date, and say how far the forecast has estimated forward since. That is how CrestCast treats a typed balance today: on a cash account, the workings show the balance you last stated and its date, the cash in and out since, and the estimate for today.

What happens next

• Q4 2026: the FCA's discussion paper on the first open finance scheme.
• After 6 October 2026: HM Treasury considers the responses to its payment services consultation and publishes its own.
• 2027: the FCA and the Treasury work on options for a long-term regulatory framework for open finance.
• 2028 to 2030: the roadmap's scaling-up phase.

The dates are the regulators' own, and the FCA says it will keep its planned activities under review. Until a scheme exists, a forecast runs on the numbers you give it. CrestCast has no bank connection and moves no money. It forecasts your household's cashflow, profit and loss and net worth ten years ahead from what you enter.