Show Notes
Van Le, Director of Innovation and Strategy at Xinja, was a guest at ASIC's Annual Forum in March 2018. She made time to join us on our podcast to discuss open banking. You can read the full transcript of the interview below. ----more---- Host: Hello and welcome to the official podcast of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. With me today to discuss open banking is Van Le, director of innovation and strategy at Xinja. Van, welcome. Van Le: Thanks very much for having us. Host: So to start us off, can you tell me a little about what open banking is and how it’s going to change banking as we know it? Van Le: I think one of the most exciting opportunities with open banking is that it will enable customers to safely and securely share data about their finances in their banking, which will enable service providers to provide much better choice and transparency so that people can make much better decisions, much more informed and transparent decisions, around what’s best for them. Host: So this is sort of about competition and consumer choice, would you say? Van: Absolutely, in a way that empowers consumers more than ever before because the options and choices available to them can now be provided in the context of genuine data and more complete data around what those options mean for someone’s financial future. Host: And you can tell me a little bit about how Xinja fits in to this idea and what your vision for banking in the future in Australia is? Van: Absolutely. What we’re really interested in doing is creating a banking service that helps people make better choices with their money and key to that is being able to provide the information that customers need in real time – information that provides a complete picture of where someone’s financial situation is and information that’s put in context of what matters to people and what they really care about so that it takes away the stress and the overwhelm of making those financial decisions. Host: So there’ll be a lot of, I would think, social and demographic components that fit in to this concept, what about issues with people who don’t have such good access to the Internet, what about people who are less financially savvy, what about elderly people, people with disabilities, people who live in rural areas – how are you planning to address the demographic impacts? Van: A common theme in terms of what we’re looking to do at Xinja is bringing humanity back to banking, and part of that is making it possible for anyone, everyone, to access the kinds of services that you used to be able to get when you had a bank manager available down the street – someone who knew your character, someone who knew your finances and someone who could talk you through what’s best for you and what your options are. We think for many customers technology provides us the opportunity to bring even more humanity to those decisions and provide more transparency and fairness, and we also recognize that there are a number of customers who don’t have similar levels of access to technology and digital channels. That’s why for us when we say that we believe people should be able to do all their banking from their mobile phone, it’s not limited to apps, it also means you can still call someone and interact with another human being to be taken through what those options and opportunities are. Host: Obviously with the kind of setup that you’re talking about, privacy and information security will be a really strong focus for you. Can you tell me a little bit about how you’re going to approach that? Van: Yes, absolutely. It begins with bringing the best that technology has to offer in terms of protecting the data that we do have. Part of that is about managing that balance between giving consumers access and control over their data and providing the freedom to share that without exposing customers to unnecessary risk. So for example, we don’t expect that customers should have to hand over
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