Brazil: Open Finance completes two years with 17.3 million customer consents

This is a machine translation of Febraban's press release

In two years of operation in Brazil, Open Finance recorded 17.3 million consents from customers to share their personal and banking data between participating financial institutions. This information is used to offer the consumer better offers of personalized products and services at better costs. In the period, 10.8 billion successful communications were also recorded between the institutions that make up the system for the exchange of information.

In a recent survey carried out by Febraban with the associated banks participating in the project, 45 products and services already offered to customers were mapped, including financial aggregators, for initiating payments, solutions to offer better credit proposals, and services aimed at cashbacks and tariffs.

This year, the focus will be on implementing phase 4, which will now include information related to non-banking participants, such as brokers and insurance companies, making the scope of the project in Brazil broader than in international cases.

The infrastructure works in Brazil under Central Bank regulation. The system works through APIs (application programming interfaces), which make the connection between the participating institutions and allow the exchange of information between them in a standardized way. The customer gives his consent for the sharing of his information, which must be used by the institution only for the specific purpose for which it was authorized and within a chosen period, and no institution can use the information for another purpose.

“The engagement of banks, through Febraban, has been decisive for the implementation of Open Finance in Brazil in record implementation time and with a greater scope than that observed in other countries. Today we have 12 different working groups at Febraban dedicated to implementing the infrastructure”, says Isaac Sidney, president of Febraban, who adds: “Febraban's expectation with the complete implementation of Open Finance is positive.”

The kickoff for the implementation of the infrastructure, initially called Open Banking , as it involved only bank participants, was given on February 1, 2021, with the sharing of information about its service channels. This first phase also included data and characteristics about the products and services offered, such as, for example, types of accounts, loans and financing that each of the participants offers to their customers.

The second phase was implemented in a staggered manner. In a first stage, the institutions began to exchange customer registration information, such as address, income and personal data. And then it was the turn to exchange information related to transaction accounts, followed by the exchange of information on credit operations and credit cards.

The third phase allowed the customer to be able to initiate bill payments and bank transfers outside of internet banking or the bank application, through an intermediary application.

The work carried out in the first two years is as expected by the banks, given the complexity of the project, which went through adjustments in its schedule, necessary within an infrastructure of this magnitude and in executions of this size, says Leandro Vilain, executive director of Innovation, Febraban Banking Products and Services.

“The amount of products and services available is already generating benefits for the customer. We are now focused on phase 4, a stage that brings more complexity because it brings together other participants and regulators outside the banking system. On the part of the banks, we have already started working on the API specifications. Then it will be the turn of the development and approval part, but we believe that this year we will already have use cases for this phase”, evaluates Vilain.

Security

To carry out the development of Open Finance within a secure environment, a team of experts constantly works with best market practices within a working group at the Infrastructure Convention. As a result, all operations carried out using Open Finance take place in an environment with several layers of security, following internationally established standards.

The customer is the owner of his personal data, and Open Finance operates unrestrictedly within the precepts of the LGPD (General Data Protection Law) and other regulations relevant to data security. In addition, the Central Bank supervises the consent and protection of customer data, in accordance with the rules and regulations already in force.