15 June 2023

EURACTIV: EU Commission seeks to regulate financial data access and use

The European Commission is drafting new rules to regulate the access and use of customer data in financial services, in a bid to ensure customers’ control over financial data and allow consumers to access tailored data-driven products and services.

 

The draft regulation, due to be published on 28 June and seen by EURACTIV, sets the rights and obligations for the access to and reuse of data in financial services, including balance of accounts, various types of investments, pension rights, and non-life insurance.

It sets requirements for data users, holders, and service providers and it applies to financial information service providers and financial institutions such as credit and payment institutions, investment firms, crypto-asset service providers, insurance intermediaries, and credit rating agencies.

“Customers of financial institutions, both consumers and firms, should have effective control over their financial data and the opportunity to benefit from open, fair, and safe data-driven innovation in the financial sector,” the proposal reads. 

According to the document, the regulation seeks to promote data-driven business models in the EU financial sector and promote individualised data-driven products and services, such as insurance dashboards, personalised investment advice and pension tracking tools.

With the regulation, the Commission also aims to reduce barriers to data sharing across the Union.

“A dedicated and harmonised framework for access to financial data is […] necessary at Union level to respond to the needs of the digital economy and to remove barriers to a well-functioning internal market for data,” the proposal reads.

The regulation builds on the revised Payment Services Directive but allows the sharing of a broader set of financial services data beyond payments.

Data access, use and sharing

According to the regulation, customers would be entitled to access their data “without undue delay, free of charge, continuously and in real-time” and “on the basis of a simple request through electronic means”.

Moreover, customers will be able to ask data holders to share their data with data users, who will only be able to access it under conditions agreed with the customer.

“Customers should be empowered to decide how and by whom their financial data is used and entitled to grant firms access to their data for the purposes of obtaining financial and information services should they wish,” the text reads.

To ensure customers can manage their data, the regulation asks data holders to set up an easy-to-find and clear permission dashboard, so that customers can monitor and manage permissions given.

According to the text, data sharing would only take place within mandatory financial data-sharing schemes, bringing together data holders, users, and consumer organisations.

These schemes would benefit from an EU passport to operate across the Union and would set “reasonable” compensation covering the costs of data holders for making data available to users....

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