Open Banking

What is Open Banking?

Open Banking is an initiative by regulators and the banking industry designed to increase competition and promote innovation. Open Banking enables you to securely share your current account data with authorised third party providers. Those providers can then offer you innovative products and services that make it easier for you to manage your financial life from one place. They can also offer you services which may reduce the cost of some of the financial products you use.

You are in control and you choose which services you use, and which providers you let access your information. You even decide for how long you’d like them to access your data.

How does it work?

Open Banking relies on establishing a standard technology for data sharing between banks – an Application Programming Interface, or API. An API is a piece of software that allows different programmes to communicate with each other. Open Banking requires banks to make standardised APIs available that will allow the sharing of account information and the transmission of payment instructions (if customers have given permission to do so).

Your financial information belongs to you, and Open Banking is designed to put you in control of it.

It will always be up to you if you want to make a payment or share data with an Open Banking service. That means you don’t need to opt in or out. You choose which services you want to share data with, and nothing is shared with services you haven’t signed up for.

Whenever you share data or make a payment from your SG Kleinwort Hambros current account, you’ll be transferred to our secure website and we’ll ask for your eBanking login details. This is so we can make sure it’s really you.

Once you’ve provided your consent to the third-party provider via our secure website, your account data and payment details are transferred between us and the third-party provider via a protected connection. If you wish to revoke an ongoing consent granted to a third-party provider to access your account, you should instruct them directly.

Keeping it safe

Open Banking should give customers more control over their data, but also raises questions about privacy and security. The regulations mean that any company with access to your data will now be responsible for ensuring it is processed, stored and transferred appropriately and securely.

You can help safeguard your data by making sure you only use firms regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. It is also worth noting that your data can’t be accessed by any third-party providers unless you give them express permission to do so.

It’s your choice

Remember, sharing data is completely your choice. If you decide to stop sharing data, we won’t send any more data to the authorized third-party provider. However, the data we have shared while you did give your permission may still be stored by the third party – you should contact them to understand what they will use it for.

No, the use of Open Banking is entirely down to you. You will be asked to provide explicit consent to a company accessing your data, and confirm this via our secure website. These companies will only be able to access account information once you have provided your consent to them. If you decide not to take part in Open Banking and take no action, nothing will change.
When we receive a request from a third party, we will check our records to ensure we have a valid consent from you before sending data to them.
If you do opt to use the services of a Third Party Provider, it’s very important for you to read the Terms and Conditions of the service to understand exactly what information they’ll be accessing and how they’ll use that data. 

Yes - Everyone involved in Open Banking must comply with Data Protection Laws and will need to be approved by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Third parties are not permitted to take any action on any account without the explicit consent of the account holder. This is a binding legal requirement placed on authorised third parties. Your information is protected and encrypted to the same level of security as eBanking.

Yes, We have used Open Banking standards and created a secure platform that give you the option to share your Account information securely. Your data is encrypted and its usage is tracked; only companies regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority or other competent authorities can use it if you have provided your consent to them.

The ability to share your current account information with authorised Third Party Providers will be available from June 2019.

A Third Party Provider could be any company who wants to offer you a service, and therefore needs your transaction history to do so. Third Party Providers are approved by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) before they can take part in Open Banking. All approved Third Parties will appear on the FCA Directory. Third Party providers could include big high street banks, newer challenger banks, or other companies that aren't banks but provide similar services e.g. credit reference agencies, and comparison websites.

Once you’ve decided to use a third party, you'll be asked to give explicit consent to share your information with them. You'll give your consent on the third party's website; once given you will be redirected to our secure authorisation page, where you’ll enter your eBanking login details. Only once authorised by you, and the we have checked the third party is authorised by the FCA, will we share your data securely. We'll store your consent and check it every time the third party requests access to your account.

To use Open Banking you must be registered with eBanking. To sign up for Open Banking you’ll need to give initial consent via a third parties site. You’ll need to provide separate consents for every third party you use. These consents will expire after 90 days so you’ll need to renew these, if you wish consents to continue beyond this time.

That’s fine; you do not need to do anything. Without your explicit consent, third parties will not be able to access any of your account information.

To stop sharing your information, you will be required to withdraw your consent for each third party you want to stop sharing your information with. If you wish to revoke an on-going consent granted to a TPP to access your account, you should instruct that TPP directly to cancel your consent.

We are working on this.

We are working on this.

Please contact us immediately, either via the helpdesk or your Private Banker if you are worried about fraudulent access or payments from your account.

We are currently not providing this functionality.

You can contact us on openbankingsupport@kleinworthambros.com You can review our onboarding information via the Open Banking Directory.

You can contact us on openbankingsupport@kleinworthambros.com Please review our test facility onboarding document here

In January 2018, the EU’s second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) came into force. PSD2 is the second iteration of regulation governing banking services, and requires banks across the EU to provide open APIs to allow third party organisations to access their customer’s banking details. PSD2 covers all banks, but also other Account Servicing Payment Service Providers (ASPSPs) including building societies and credit unions. The Open Banking initiative is the UK solution for meeting this requirement, and was initially mandated for the ‘big 9’ banks, however is expected to widely adopted by the entire UK banking sector.

As part of the EU’s second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), you will also see changes in the way you access eBanking, with the introduction of biometric login and payment authorisation. You will be informed of these change later this year.

Third Party Provider (TPP)

SG Kleinwort Hambros has a testing facility based on Open Banking standards available for FCA authorised Third Party Providers.

Please contact us: khonline@kleinworthambros.com 

You can review our test facility onboarding document here.

Performance and Availability Metrics

The links below provide quarterly summaries of Performance & Availability metrics for the SG Kleinwort Hambros Open Banking service and our digital banking channels.