Ed Maslaveckas: Give people power over their data | WIRED Smarter 2019

[audience applauding]

Cheers.

Hi there.

So yeah, data, sort of asset or liability,

that is the question of today.

And hopefully I will try and answer it as best as I can.

So, I see most of us here have kind of had

that conversation about data, about your personal data.

Usually kind of ends up in a sort of a negative stance

where you're sort of saying, Oh yeah,

that is, it's quite scary, isn't it?

We tend to think of sort of data

as kind of Cambridge Analytica sort of manipulation,

bank fraud, nations interfering with other nations.

But, I mean, to we don't really think

that that should be the case.

If I was to ask someone here who they were,

they would give me their name.

If I was to ask them where they worked,

they would probably tell me.

If I was to ask them how much they earned, maybe not.

But these are kind of important

sort of assets that we own.

And really, they are kind of the basis

of how we interact in our day-to-day life.

And that's why four years ago I founded Bud, really.

So we provide an API toolkit

that helps banks to get to know customers.

And that really focuses around the analysis

of transactional datasets.

So throughout history, access to data

and the capacity to process it has been linked with power.

Now, while we talk about power,

it's interesting to bring up a letter

that was sent to my mom in 1983 from Midland Bank.

I don't know if people know what Midland Bank is

or who they are, but they're now First Direct,

which funny enough 'cause it's one of our key customers.

And I dunno if anyone, you can read this here,

but part of it says, Recently, I met with your mother

at the market in Catwick,

which is a small little town in East Riding.

And I was sorry to hear that you're moving away

and that's the reason why you have to close down

your account with us.

And my dad kept this letter because it, you know,

it was kind of that real personal touch that you don't get,

or you didn't get and you still don't get in modern banking.

And that's the thing that we're really obsessed with.

And that's the thing that we believe,

if we can bring that context back to data,

and understand who customers actually are

on a person-by-person basis,

we can actually help our bank customers

change the experiences they create.

So when we look at sort of progress

both politically and technologically,

that has always really been about control of data.

Even as far back as the modern laws in the Magna Carta,

data was made the center of the criminal trials

and convictions to make them more transparent,

giving victims and perpetrators alike

access to the same data.

It gave people agency over what was done to them.

400 years later, parliament needed a way

of stopping officers in its new modern army

from killing each other in duels.

So they passed the slander laws.

Again, this was about data.

You now had control over what people could say about you.

400 years on from that,

we're now wrestling with the next major step.

How do we get control over what people know about you?

So, look at this beautiful thing.

We're quite lucky actually in the UK,

on this issue, at least, this one.

We're really one of the most progressive countries

in the world.

GDPR, on the bottom, gives us the underlying substance,

the basis of the approach to that personal data

is centered around an individual.

It says I have the legal right to know

what data you hold on me.

So we mostly I think know that here.

But what we don't really know

is that the law also tells companies

to provide the data in a machine readable format on request.

That is actually really huge.

This is the legal basis for a truly connected economy

built around the consent of an individual.

Building on GDPR, as we go up the chain,

we have all sorts of great projects going on.

The government data strategy,

the work of the Center of Data Ethics and Innovation,

the work the BIS is doing around smart open finance.

The projects in isolation would be great,

but together they're more than that.

They're moving in the same direction.

Painting a picture of a country

with an enlightened view on personal data.

The goal is the right one, ultimately.

And in open banking we've provided

the infrastructure to deliver it.

So the kind of question is what does that look like.

For those of you who don't know, open banking is,

essentially, it allows access from,

if I was to say, hey, to my bank,

I would like you to give my banking data

to another institution, then that's allowed now.

So I wanna show you what that actually looks like

because I think it's quite important

to talk through how simple that experience has become.

So essentially, I'm in my banking app.

This is HSBC's live banking app.

I say I'd like to share my data with a third-party.

What happens then is goes off to the third-party app.

So it opens the third-party app.

You connect it.

Goes back into your app and that's the data shared.

So I think it's important 'cause actually,

we kind of talk about this,

well, the question that often is asked in open banking,

is it successful, does it work.

And this is the kind of clear flow of how simple it is.

So the access piece is now allowed.

Is really more simple than ever.

All you need is a face or a fingerprint.

PSD2 started with a a piece of EU legislation.

The FCA picked up the ball and really ran with it.

The result of this is that, now,

we're on the brink of a real revolution

in the way that we relate to our data.

It comes back to power, again.

The financial system was designed in a way

to centralize most of the power in a few institutions.

Sure, you can have a bank account, but only on our terms.

You can come into our branches, as we saw earlier,

you can use our app.

You have to provide ID in the format that we say.

Open banking is beginning to upend this.

And the balance of power is now shifting.

As a customer, I can make my data do anything I want.

I can make it move to any bank

and I can do my banking from any app of my choosing.

So who will succeed in this world?

Ultimately, that balance of power means that,

now, banks have to provide more personalized

enriched services, or banks will just migrate

their data somewhere else with their face.

Banks are already moving to meet these expectations

with sort of smart users of data,

better integrations with the API economy.

It's still really early in this process,

but we should really kind of now have a look

at what's actually going on in the market.

So recently, we did a piece of research with YouGov.

The survey looks at what people want from their finances.

And the results really couldn't have been clearer.

I hope this is clear.

People want to do their day-to-day admin,

and be good with their money,

and they want to do that in their banking app.

They want all these decisions to be helpful

and made with assistance from the bank.

Only the doctor and the NHS ranked higher than the bank

when it came to questions

around who they trusted to handle their data.

So people want these services from their bank,

but delivering them requires banks

to adopt a different model.

For centuries, banks have adopted a manufacturing model.

They make products and sell them to customers.

They had a monopoly over those products,

so they didn't really need to do much else.

That model, again, is changing.

People want the banks to offer a breadth of services

that is beyond what the bank is set up to deliver today.

And the banks are responding by moving from manufacturers

to being intelligently connected ecosystems.

They bring together multiple services in one place,

provide a trusted environment for transactions,

and provide enough choice to make supply into competitive,

sorry, make supply a competitive process.

Instead of making a sort of margin

on just selling their own products,

they'll make money by monetizing their customer base,

taking a cut from product suppliers when they make a sale.

So the first versions of these sort of already exist.

We should play a beautiful video now.

So Clydesdale Yorkshire Building Society,

now Virgin Money, have rolled out a feature in their app

that allows you to get a quote from an energy supplier

if your bill is high.

It's a basic implementation at the moment,

and it needs to go through a couple of evolutions

before it really starts to deliver on the promise

of what open finance can do for us.

But the statement of intent is very real.

Monzo, who we'll hear from later is rolling out

partnership with Mojo Mortgages

to help customers re-mortgage easily

and end fixed rate deals.

Monzo have also partnered with another attendee from today,

OakNorth, to deliver better savings in their apps.

Again, this is still really early days,

but your bank could work out

that you've just slipped into a standard variable tariff

and fix that problem automatically

just by sort of the consent and sharing of data.

Switching people onto better deals,

like these two examples we've just gone through,

is an obvious application of smart open banking.

The loyalty penalty, the acts of overpaying due to inertia

is around a 4 billion annual problem in the UK

and it shouldn't exist.

People avoid switching because it's effortful

and because the rewards are perceived as distant.

But banks can solve both of these problems.

If I can tell my bank to send my name,

my address, my transactions

to an energy provider in a machine readable format,

then it's obvious that the next step is to tell my bank

to send that information other places

that can offer me value.

Doing so replaces the need to fill out forms,

to dig out information about my provider,

input all of these pieces of data

that I don't have to hand on a comparison site.

Hmm?

What's happened here?

Okay, that's fine.

Sorry.

Auto switching is actually is great.

It's happening now and it'll solve a lot of problems.

But it's not the whole game.

The real win is when we go a step further.

With banks acting as intelligent advisors,

enriching our data, putting it in context

and making it portable, we start to get a new kind of space

where our finances can automatically start

to look at our future.

Again, it's not just future-gazing, this is happening.

At Bud, we recently signed a partnership

that means that we can make it easy for people

to share their history of making rent payments with Experian

to build up their credit score.

In the context of a housing crisis

that is seeing more than 40% of people

paying more than half of their income in rent,

the ability to make data to go to work for you,

making credit more affordable,

helping people avoid payday lenders is incredibly powerful.

Banking has gone first.

It has been the test bed for open data.

In the movement of open banking,

we've provided out a model that works.

First, the legislation made it inevitable.

Then the regulation came in

with the standards to make it workable.

Then the big institutions are adopting it

to make it accessible.

All of that happened before anyone really

started doing anything innovative with it.

And now, with that model,

we can expect to see the same approaches spreading.

Open finance, open insurance.

People are already years down the line

and planning for these things.

But it won't stop there.

If you make a subject to access request,

I dunno if anyone's done that, to Sainsbury's,

they'll respond within about 30 minutes.

There is no way that's being handled manually.

They're already automating the process.

This raises some huge questions for businesses

looking out to the next five years.

Perhaps, the most fundamental of this is

how on Earth do I differentiate my brand?

And we think there's a kind of simple answer to that.

You don't.

Ultimately, it's about experience.

Whoever frames the experience best,

wins the right to distribute the product within.

And part of framing the experience

is distributing the right product at the right time.

The ones that help your customers achieve

whatever they wanna do in their life.

We started working with banks

because it made sense for us to add these services

to wherever the customer was spending their time.

But there's no reason that this kind of access

for this technology should be restricted

to large institutions.

And that's why we're excited today

to be opening access to our platform to all comers,

regardless of size or industry.

You'll need to demonstrate, obviously,

that you have a responsible approach to data

and that go through our due diligence processes.

But ultimately, if you can frame an experience

brilliantly for people, you want to be able to build

these new financial lives for them.

We are democratizing both access to customer

and the ability to understand

what they want from your business.

So that's kind of open banking

and the world of data that we exist in today.

But ultimately we still have some, some huge questions

to answer when it comes to reaching a healthy balance

in our relationship with personal data.

There's an ongoing debate

between the ideas of ownership and control.

There is skepticism around the levels of value

that people will get from these services.

There is fear, there's uncertainty and doubt

around how safe they are.

There is still a lot to talk about.

But I think, thankfully, for you, I'm out of time, actually.

Red light's gone on.

If I can leave you one thought,

it's that your personal data is not a liability.

Some of it has value.

You should protect it.

It's your asset, yours to control,

yours to understand and set to work.

And if you do that well, you can live

a better, happier life.

Thanks.

[audience clapping]

[Host] Thank you, Ed.