Open banking is here – but it will cost you your privacy

Open banking brings with it many advantages, says Merryn Somerset Webb. Just be sure your privacy is a price worth paying.

I am worried. This time it isn't inflation, interest rates or markets. It is you and your financial data. Since the Facebook crisis, most of us grasp that data is an asset one that can be sold to advertisers and promoters. But still not enough of us grasp quite what that means for financial apps.

In our new world of "open banking" which requires banks and building societies to make your account data available to other companies, at your request lots of new apps, promising to help you manage your finances, are springing up. You sign up (free!). You link all your accounts, assets and borrowing to the app. You can see everything in one place (no more manually updating your own spreadsheets!). The app, be it Moneyhub or Yolt in the UK or Clarity in the US (which has just been bought by Goldman Sachs for an undisclosed sum), then gives you "powerful insights" into your spending habits and the tools to help you manage better "nudges" to pay bills, and to save when you can.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Explore More
Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.