What is open finance?
Open finance extends open banking principles beyond current accounts to pensions, investments, mortgages, savings and insurance. It allows a consumer to bring a complete financial picture into a single permissioned view, rather than one product type at a time.
It is not yet a single statutory regime in the way open banking is. In practice it operates through a mix of commercial APIs, aggregators and provider-by-provider connections, with government smart data powers providing the direction of travel.
The consequence for advice is direct. Held-away assets — the pensions from three jobs ago, the investment account nobody mentioned, the policy taken out in the 1990s — are only visible if the client discloses them or connects them. Open finance turns a one-off disclosure into a maintained connection.
The permission model is what makes it work. The consumer connects the accounts and decides what a firm can see; the firm sees a live picture rather than a snapshot taken at the last annual review.