Four key principles to support the development of a robust open finance framework have been identified by the Association of for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) in a new paper.

The publication, Open Finance and Data Sharing – Building Blocks for a Competitive, Innovative and Secure Framework, comes ahead of the European Commission’s announcement of a framework for data access in financial services, expected before the end of 2022. The Commission’s move was referenced by European Union financial policy chief Mairead McGuiness in September 2022.

The AFME’s four principles are;

• a level playing field is crucial;
• standardization and interoperability are vital;
• there must be an appropriate compensation framework;
• liability provisions must be clear.

James Kemp, Managing Director, Global FX, at AFME said: “We believe these four key principles will encourage trust in an EU data ecosystem that is sustainable, competitive and delivers beneficial long-term impact, while also mitigating the risks of data exploitation.”

AFME Associate Director of Technology and Operations Elise Soucie said the principles had been drawn up because “with innovation comes potential for unintended consequences such as sharing data with participants in other sectors who may already have a dominant share of both individual and corporate data and which could lead to monopolies and the exploitation of data”.

The detail in the paper outlines 20 building blocks underpinning the key principles.