Singapore favours ‘organic’ policy in move toward open banking

(Apr 12): Singapore wants its lenders to share data with financial technology and other non-bank firms, but doesn’t plan to force the issue, according to a central bank official.

The transition towards “open banking” can be more successful if it takes place without the regulator mandating action, said David Hardoon, Chief Data Officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. “You can come and say ‘thou shall do it’ but then nothing happens effectively,” Hardoon said in a Wednesday interview.

The MAS’s policy differs from the approach taken in Europe and Japan, where regulators have set deadlines for banks to give access to their client data to rivals and to fintech firms. In Europe, banks have until 2019 to comply with the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which obliges them to share client account data.

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