Page 25 - Doing Data Together by The Scotsman

Inside The Royal Observatory on Blackford Hill, Edinburgh. GOFCoE’s economic observatory will provide live data
THE VIEW FROM EDINBURGH’S SANDPIT AND OBSERVATORY
A concrete example of open finance extending beyond open banking came in June when government agency UK Research & Innovation awarded £22.5 million from its Strength in Places Fund to the Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence (GOFCoE) in Edinburgh.
Work on this began in October 2018 when a consortium was formed between Scottish Enterprise, the University of Edinburgh, FinTech Scotland and the Financial Data and Technology Association (FDATA) – bringing together expertise from the university’s Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) and its Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre.
It aims to shift the balance of financial sector power away from traditional institutions towards consumers, giving them control over who has access to their data, and allowing them to reap the benefits from analysing it.
Professor Jonathan Seckl, University of Edinburgh Senior Vice-Principal, pictured, says:
“Using real financial data for social good and allowing governments, companies and people to make better economic and financial decisions is at our heart.
“The centre will be a world- first, providing leadership, co-ordination, research and capability to develop the benefits of open finance and to safely unlock the potential of customer data as a force to improve lives.”
The centre will act as both a “digital sandpit” and an “economic observatory”. The “sandpit” will contain
anonymised live data from financial services providers around the world, which finance firms and tech companies
will then be able to access
to test the products and services they’re developing, and governments will be able to use to predict the impacts of proposed policies and regulations.
The centre’s economic observatory will provide the live data that universities, charities and NGOs need to gain fresh insight into national and global issues – such as climate change – and then suggest evidence-based policies.
Gavin Littlejohn, global executive chairman of FDATA, says the centre will “maintain an important independence, neutrality and grip on ethics, without which it would not be trusted to function”.
He adds: “It is becoming increasingly clear
that the grand open finance challenges
GOFCoE will address simply can’t be solved by working alone.”
ogy, Telecommunications and Elec- tronics Association told the FCA in its response to the call for input: “From open banking to open finance, there is a clear logical pathway.
“For open banking to truly take place, open finance should become a reality. For customers to get the
most from both their data and mon- ey, there is a need to extend the scope of open banking.
“To fulfil the promise of open bank- ing, customers need to be able to securely share a wider pool of data including, for example: pension, insurance [and] mortgages.”
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