The Future Of Consumer-Driven Banking

Senior counsel Brigitte Goulard spoke with Canadian Lawyer following the federal government's introduction of the Consumer-Driven Banking Act (CBDA), draft legislation that outlines initial steps toward launching a framework for consumer-driven banking (also known as "open banking") in Canada.

"The simplest way to explain [open banking or consumer-driven banking]," Brigitte says, "is that consumers will have access to the data that is currently sitting in your financial institution, and you will be allowed to direct your financial institution to send that information to another service provider or app to help manage their money."

This is done through application programming interface (API) technology, Brigitte explains, which will allow financial institutions to provide third-party service providers access to their customers' banking data.