Open banking could benefit the UK economy to the tune of £43bn a year when it reaches full maturity, but the industry must heed recent warnings against complacency.
According to research commissioned by Open Banking Limited (OBL), an organisation created to implement open banking, the UK has already achieved £8.2bn in economic benefits through open banking.
The analysis, carried out by EY, found that open banking could deliver £7.4bn a year within five years, rising to £43bn a year when open banking is fully mature.
But the UK has work to do to reach its open banking potential. Just last month, at an open banking event in London, Ron Kalifa, former CEO of fintech giant Worldpay, who produced a landmark government-commissioned fintech report in 2021, warned that the UK is losing its leadership in open banking, having “laid the rail track, but hesitated to run the trains”.
It was 2017 when the Competition and Markets Authority’s Retail Banking Market Investigation Order meant UK banks were required to implement open banking regulations, which led to the development of application programming interfaces (APIs), to give consumers more control over their bank accounts.
The end goal was to increase competition in a retail banking sector dominated by big financial services companies. Customer banking data is shared by the industry through APIs, with customers’ permission, enabling businesses to offer tailored products.
Next phase
Open finance, as open banking’s next phase is often described, will see firms use APIs to share banking data across more services, such as mortgages and loans, and offer products and services from external organisations.
Following the report, Henk Van Hulle, CEO of OBL, said there are now over 17.5 million user connections to open banking services.
There is an even greater opportunity ahead now that open banking has reached a key point of maturity Henk Van Hulle, OBL
“[The] findings show that there is an even greater opportunity ahead now that open banking has reached a key point of maturity,” he said. “By helping consumers manage their money better and enabling businesses to operate more efficiently, open banking is already contributing meaningfully to economic growth, a key component of the government’s wider growth mission.”
Other findings of the OBL-commissioned analysis were a £2.3bn annual increase in GDP from SME productivity gains within five years and a £2.5bn annual GDP boost from improved consumer financial management.
According to OBL figures, there are 17.51 million live user connections across the UK, supported by 145 authorised third-party providers. In January 2026, open banking payments rose by 4.3% month on month to £36.04m, the figures showed.
Thomas Bull, head of fintech growth at EY, said: “Looking ahead, continued collaboration between industry, regulators and government will be critical to building on this momentum, scaling the existing ecosystem and supporting the transition towards open finance, enabling broader, fairer access to financial services across the UK.”
Kalifa also warned last month that open finance, “once the next chapter” of open banking, is “still waiting to land”, and pointed to the way countries such as Brazil and India are moving ahead.
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