CFIT Unveils The Founding Members Of The Open Finance Coalition

The Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) has revealed the founding members for the “Open Finance Coalition.” These founding members will work together to demonstrate the power that lies with financial data to boost the efficiency of SMEs and improve consumer outcomes.

CFIT reveals the founding members of the Open Finance Coalition

While speaking with Finextra, the CEO of CFIT, Ezechi Britton MBE, said that the main focus of this coalition was to establish the control of open finance and how doing this can generate positive outcomes for SMEs and consumers to understand and be aware of the existing financial situations.

He further said that CFIT was working with SMEs to guarantee more control and access to data. He further noted that the goal behind this coalition was that it represented a cross-section of financial services and the associated verticals that draw upon the benefits of open finance.

The organizations that will be committing to this coalition in the initial stages include Amazon Web Services, Mastercard, Monzo, Revolut, Open Banking Limited, HSBC, EY, and Innovate Finance, among others. Briton noted that this move demonstrated the power of CFIT as the company remained positioned between policy and government.

The CFIT has said that it expects the coalitions to last for between six and twelve months. However, it is anticipated that the Open Finance Coalition will operate under a six-month timeline. The strict deadline set by the CFIT was deliberate, with Britton saying that it demonstrated commitment and confidence to making significant progress.

“If you look at what we’ve achieved, no one would have thought we would have been able to get this particular coalition of partners together and agree to participate in this activity in the timeframe that we have done. Normally you’d spend six to nine months setting up something like this, we’ve done it in two,” Britton said.

Boosting innovation through collaboration

Britton noted that the CFIT was playing a critical role in boosting innovation through collaboration. The platform wanted to bring everyone together to set up a level playing field that would eliminate the barrier to scalability and guarantee that each company focused on financial innovation can achieve growth and scalability.

Britton was announced as the CEO of CFIT in February 2023, and he started serving in this role in April. Since taking over at the helm of leadership in the company, Britton has managed to secure this coalition in just a few months.

He opined that the company would start confirming new senior hires soon. He explained that the progress made by the company had been realized in the open banking sector. Therefore, it was clear that the industry needed to transition from open banking to open finance and open data, adding that the company was involved in this initiative.