For our fifth episode, we’re delighted to welcome Gavin Littlejohn, founder of Money Dashboard, an early PFM in the UK, in 2006, and CEO until 2015, before going on to play a key part in the open banking negotiations in the UK, and advise many countries on similar initiatives worldwide since.

The conversation is part retrospective on how open banking came about and part current state assessment, with fascinating insight from someone who had a front row seat through it all, covering how difficult it was running a direct to consumer fintech proposition back in 2006, how big banks behaved during the initial open banking negotiations, and what other countries can now learn from the UK/European experience.   

Time stamps as follows:

01:20 - Gavin sums up his experience as CEO of Money Dashboard and the barriers to entry he experienced at that time

04:00 – Gavin talks about the subsequent role he played in the open banking negotiations in the UK, and the two key strands of that

07:15 – Gavin comments on how the big banks behaved during the initial open banking negotiations  

10:14 – Gavin comments on some of the implementation details of open banking in the UK that changed the shape and form of what the UK fintech community expected  

16:15 – Gavin comments on why he thinks banks missed initial implementation deadlines and why it continues

20:15 – Gavin comments on which banks went on the longest journey to deliver value from open banking to their customers

22:15 – Gavin comments on who are the biggest beneficiaries of open banking - banks, consumers or new entrants - based on last five years

25:46 – Gavin comments on current adoption numbers in the UK, and whether that’s above, below, or on expectation

28:50 – Gavin comments on Account Information services versus Payments, and where the real opportunity is

32:00 – Gavin opines on how the rest of world looked at the UK case, and what could be improved.

32:50 – Gavin comments on prospects for open finance worldwide based on conversations he’s had

36:40 – Gavin comments on who he thinks has delivered the best open banking, why and how

39:00 – Gavin comments on whether next gen open banking will deliver disruptive new business models or primarily help incumbent banks improve existing operations