Open Banking Australia
Giving you more control over your financial choices and banking data.
Open Banking is a new data sharing initiative introduced by the Australian government that has been designed with the intention to give you greater access to and control over your financial data.
As part of the Australian government's Consumer Data Rights Legislation, Open Banking provides a safe and secure framework for you to authorise accredited third parties, such as Financial Planners, Accountants or app providers, to access your financial information so that they can provide you with goods or services.
If you choose to give an accredited data recipient access to your data, they may be able to see things such as an overview of your bank accounts, your transactions, interest rates and/or the fees and charges you are paying. This could allow them to help you to better understand whether you're getting real value for money with your banking products.
How do I manage my Open Banking data sharing consent?
You're in control of when and who you share your data with. You can withdraw or change your existing consents at any time in the Consent Dashboard accessible through Heritage Online or the Mobile Banking App.
Consent for joint accounts is being developed in the next stage of Consumer Data Right and Open Banking.
What data can I share from my Heritage accounts?
From 1 July 2021, you can consent to share specific data for your individual Personal and Credit Card Accounts. You can choose to share all this information, or only certain types of data.
Basic Bank Account Data
- Personal accounts
- Credit card accounts
Bank Transaction Data
- How many transactions you've done in a period of time
- Any loan repayments
- Any cheque bounces
- Minimum balance with account
- Incoming transactions
- Outgoing transactions
Bank Customer Data
- Account name
- Bank and branch name
- Account type
In future releases, you'll be able to share more data such as information on joint accounts, direct debits, scheduled payments, your regular payees, recurring account and payment details and closed accounts.
How do I identify an accredited data recipient?
In this phase of Consumer Data Right, you can only consent to share your data with an accredited data recipient. When you authorise a new sharing consent through a third party, they must be accredited with the ACCC and meet certain rules and safeguards to access your data.
You can check the Register of Accredited Persons at cdr.gov.au at any time to confirm whether a business or person you are considering sharing your data with is accredited. Plus, all accredited data recipients are authorised to display the Consumer Data Right logo.
Once Open Banking is introduced Australia-wide it could change the way you compare products and services between banks.
- Open Banking provides the framework for accredited third parties, such as app developers, to create new financial tools and services that use Consumer Data Right data to provide more personalised services.
- Sharing your banking data with these third parties is by opt-in only. You’re in control of your data and you can stop sharing your data at any time.
- Once these third party tools and services are created, you may be able to more easily compare products across banks and access more accurate budgeting tools. You may even be able to see one view of your bank accounts across multiple financial institutions.
Product data
As part of the first stage of Open Banking, Heritage shared publicly available information, such as product rates, fees and features across our products. We shared this information via APIs (application programming interfaces) for third parties to access. This means that third parties such as comparison websites or financial planners, can use this general information to compare bank products for you and find a product that fits best.Consumer data
From 1 July 2021, you can share your Basic Bank Account Data on individual accounts. You can manage this consent in your Consent Dashboard, accessible through Heritage Online and the Mobile Banking App.
In future releases, in accordance with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) timeline, you'll be able to share more data such as information on joint accounts, direct debits, scheduled payments, your regular payees, recurring account and payment details and closed accounts.
At Heritage, protecting your privacy is our priority. We understand that giving a third party access to your banking data may seem a little daunting. Rest assured, Open Banking has privacy protections in place that will ensure your data is shared safely and securely. The protections include:
- You choose if you want to participate and who you share your data with.
- Before any company can request access to your data through Open Banking or seek your permission to see your data, they’ll need to be accredited by the ACCC.
- You can manage which data you share and cancel sharing at any time.
- You can ask for your data to be deleted by the third party.
- You can authorise third parties to access your data for a nominated time, up to 12 months.
- After 12 months, third party access to your data will automatically expire. This means they won’t have access to your data for an indefinite amount of time.