Open Finance: FCA Roadmap

Quick read

The FCA has published its roadmap for open finance, setting out a "clear and ambitious path" for 2026-2030 that it - working with the government, other regulators and industry - will follow to take forward open finance's development and delivery.

For firms, the roadmap offers a range of opportunities to provide input and feedback to the FCA through industry engagement, Sprints, and responding to discussion papers. There is a clear role for stakeholders to help shape the long-term regulatory framework in this area by engaging, providing evidence, participating in testing, and identifying potential barriers that could impact progress.

The context and vision

Launching open finance is one of the FCA's priorities under its current five-year strategy (see our blog post). In addition, banking and financial services are central to the government's recently published smart data strategy, with open finance being a critical enabler for developing smart data schemes across sectors (see our blog post).

The FCA's vision for open finance is for it to deliver:

• Increased innovation and competition.
• Inclusive consumer and SME outcomes.
• Enhanced economic growth.

The purpose of the roadmap is to provide clarity to industry and allow coordinated investment. It outlines the key decisions and actions that are needed to develop and deliver open finance at scale.

The FCA's approach

The FCA describes its approach as "agile" and "deliberately pragmatic, evidence-led and collaborative". It will draw on learnings from open banking and international experience to help open finance develop in a "secure, trusted and proportionate" way. Activities and initiatives under the roadmap will harness the capabilities of the FCA's Innovation Hub and Smart Data Accelerator.

There are three stages to the FCA's planned activities, starting immediately and extending to 2030:

2026: collaboration to prioritise what open finance should deliver

This year, the FCA intends to:

• Prioritise high-impact use cases where open finance can deliver benefits most quickly. The FCA will start with exploring how open finance could improve access to (i) lending to SMEs, and (ii) consumers’ access to mortgages.
• Build robust evidence through Sprints and structured experiments, testing what works in practice and where barriers remain. In February 2026, the FCA concluded SME Finance and Mortgages TechSprints as part of its Smart Data Accelerator and it has recently published some key insights. Building on this, the FCA intends to hold a Mortgage PolicySprint in Q2/Q3 2026 to grow consensus on where open finance can make material improvements to consumer journeys and outcomes (an outcomes report will follow in Q4 2026). It will also hold further TechSprints in Q4 2026 (an outcomes report will follow in H1 2027).
• Draw on stakeholder expertise and insights to identify the impact of future use cases on consumer outcomes, competition, growth and innovation. A new FCA-led taskforce will develop a Prioritisation and Real-world Insights Selection Matrix (PRISM) to identify these impacts, with a report scheduled for Q3 2026.
• Work closely with industry, consumer groups and the government to assess delivery models, incentives and the role of industry-led solutions. Between Q2 and Q3 2026, the aim is for this targeted engagement to focus on scoping a framework for the first scheme, with a discussion paper on delivering this framework to follow in Q4 2026.

2027: framework design and coordination

Next year, the FCA intends to:

• Use the evidence from earlier phases to shape options for the long-term regulatory framework for open finance that will enable the delivery of high-impact use cases through data sharing. The FCA will seek views on this through a discussion paper, which will be published in H1 or early H2 2027. The FCA will then work with HM Treasury, by the end of 2027, to consider options for the regulatory framework. (In a related press release, the FCA adds that firms will be supported to introduce open finance products sooner where they are already able to access data and appropriate permissions are in place.)
• Identify where common frameworks, shared infrastructure or governance arrangements are needed to unlock benefits at scale.
• Carry out further TechSprints and PolicySprints with industry, consumer groups and regulators in H2 2027.

2028 to 2030: scale and deliver

The FCA's longer term activities will support scaling up and delivery of future open finance schemes. It intends to:

• Collaborate with industry to identify use cases and launch sustainable open finance schemes with clear governance, high standards of consumer protection and interoperability.
• Review its priorities as markets evolve, new technologies emerge and more high-impact use cases are identified.

Next steps

The FCA is keen to deliver the roadmap at pace and will assess its impact on the wider ecosystem over the coming months. The planned activities under the roadmap will be kept under review.

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