Open Banking Australia

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. 

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 November 2022, you can share Bank Account Data on personal (individual and joint account) and non-personal memberships including home loans, offset accounts, personal loans and business accounts. You can also share more data such as information on direct debits, scheduled payments, your regular payees, recurring payment details and closed accounts. Once you've authorised an accredited data recipient to access your data, you can manage this consent anytime in your Consent Dashboard, accessible through Heritage Online and the Mobile Banking App.

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.