Open Banking Excellence
Open Banking Excellence, or OBE, is a British community and knowledge platform for people who work on open banking and open finance. Its network brings together fintechs, banks, regulators and other financial services firms from more than 40 countries. OBE names its mission as speeding up the adoption of open finance and open data for better financial inclusion around the world.
OBE started as a group of 30 fintechs that met over pizza and beer, and today it runs free discussion events called campfires, publishes research and hosts a competition for fintech startups. Its consultancy arm Ignite advises governments, banks and regulators on open banking policy and delivery. A local initiative called OBE Brasil carries the same model to the Brazilian market.
Campfires and the Appathon
A campfire is a free discussion event of Open Banking Excellence on one open banking topic, with peers from financial services, fintech and regulation. The first campfire took place in January 2019, and more than 50 have followed. Topics ranged from variable recurring payments and the Consumer Duty to PSD3, digital identity in the United Kingdom and payment initiation in Brazil.
The Appathon is a competition for fintech startups and scaleups that build open finance products. Entries compete in wealth management, retail payments and lending, and products that serve diverse or financially excluded groups or reduce carbon emissions score extra points.
Founder and team
Helen Child is founder and chief executive of Open Banking Excellence. Before OBE she founded an e-money issuer that became the first in the United Kingdom to receive licenses from both Mastercard and Visa. Helen Child is a member of the payments panel of HM Revenue and Customs, where she advises on open banking strategy, and she was a founding member of the InfoLab at Lancaster University.
Becci Furnell works in the OBE team next to Helen Child. OBE puts the combined experience of its team at more than 50 years in fintech, banking and payments, plus two decades in events, marketing, content and public relations.
Upcoming payments and fintech events in Europe
Global Open Finance Index and Transatlantic Index
The Global Open Finance Index of OBE draws on more than 400 open banking and open finance experts in 23 markets and on more than 150 secondary data points from sources such as the World Bank, the IMF and Dealroom. The index finds that the United Kingdom leads in implementation and adoption and that mandated standards go along with higher adoption: seven of the ten markets with the highest adoption took a mandated approach.
The Transatlantic Index USA, written with the University of Oxford, looks at the American market after the personal financial data rights rule of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In the survey, 90 percent of respondents outside the United States said they wanted or planned to enter the American market, and 85 percent said that consumers there do not know the open banking products on offer.
Ignite advisory and PR services
Ignite is the strategic consultancy arm of Open Banking Excellence and advises governments, banks and businesses on open banking policy, strategy and delivery. Its clients include a European central bank, a government department in Mexico, the British Embassy in Mexico City and a regulator in the Middle East. Ignite draws on a network that OBE puts at more than 40,000 industry experts.
OBE also sells public relations and content services to open banking firms, places speakers at events and awards, and runs bespoke masterclasses and roundtables for client companies.
Membership, partners and sponsors
People join the OBE community by registering an account on its platform, and the campfires are free to attend. Companies take part through headline sponsorships, community sponsorships or bespoke packages, and Salesforce and Accenture are the headline sponsors.
The strategic partners of OBE include The Payments Association, UK Finance, Innovate Finance and regional fintech networks such as FinTech Scotland, FinTech Wales and FinTech North. Money20/20, Women in Payments and the Open Banking Implementation Entity are partners as well.
OBE Brasil
OBE Brasil is the local initiative of Open Banking Excellence in Brazil, sponsored by Mastercard and Accenture. It started when open banking took off in the country and connects Brazilian banks, fintechs and regulators with British pioneers through campfires, hackathons, masterclasses and events.
Open Banking Excellence and Finance Loop
The topics of the OBE campfires are also open questions for Finance Loop members in Germany: payment initiation, account data in lending, variable recurring payments and the EU proposal on financial data access. Finance Loop brings people from banks, fintechs and supervisors together at its events on payments and digital money in Germany and Europe.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.