Oct. 17, 2022

Professor publishes article with The School of Public Policy

Professor Ryan Clements has published an article as part of the policy school's paper series.

Using international precedent, "Could Alberta Enact a Sub-National Open Banking Regime?charts a pragmatic course for how the province can immediately participate in the benefits of open banking, open finance, and consumer data portability, without requiring a complex sub-national regulatory and governance structure like the federal approach or expending scarce provincial policy resources.

According to the paper, the province can take three immediate steps under a market-facilitative approach. First, engage in public-facing educational efforts on the benefits, use-cases, processes, accessibility, functionality, and successes of the FIA sandbox as applied to data portability. This may include developing principles for safe data sharing, and recommended design standards and guidance. Second, in conjunction with the FIA, utilize and promote the Invest Alberta Financial Services Concierge service as a gateway to open banking partnerships and the FIA sandbox. Third, investigate how to create and implement a provincial consumer data right (CDR), which would serve as a catalyst in the province for a myriad of data-portability use cases beyond banking to an open-data paradigm, including applications in energy, investments, insurance, utilities, telecommunications, consumer retail and self-sovereign digital identify.

Read the article