denis beau : from open banking to open finance speech by mr denis beau, first deputy governor of the bank of france, at the france payments forum “ the europe of banking and financial services ” – paris europlace – france innovation, paris, 24 march 2022. * * * technological innovations, changes in demand, the arrival of new players : the changes underway in the financial sector are providing a strong impetus to relax the conditions of access to the market, in order to foster competition and thus encourage the development of new, more efficient and less costly services. in europe, in the field of payments, this relaxation has already occurred. the emd, the psd1 and finally the psd2 directives have all resulted in the emergence of more agile players, particularly in terms of data exploitation. the pressure to open up data now extends to insurance and savings : after open banking, we now speak of open finance. this pressure calls for further adapting the regulatory framework. but what should our guiding principles be? in the payments sector, the main objective of the directives i mentioned was to reconcile openness and security. while this challenge remains relevant for the transition from open banking to open finance, with digitalisation and the development of the platform economy, we have seen two other challenges emerge : reconciling innovation and integration on the one hand and competition and sovereignty on the other. how do we at the banque de france and the acpr, given our role and experience as a supervisor, plan to address these new challenges? this is what i would like to briefly discuss with you today, after a quick recap of the regulatory framework for open banking and the lessons that can be drawn from it to guide the development of open finance. part i : openness and security a - as regards the assessment of and lessons learned from the regulatory framework for open banking, i would like to start by recalling : 1 - the key principles that governed the sharing of payment data : on the one hand, the creation of appropriate statuses and, on the other, the strengthening of security requirements for access. the creation of the payment service or electronic money service provider status has fostered the emergence of an open banking ecosystem. the introduction of an agent status has also contributed to this process, by creating a gradual – proportionate – regulatory framework : it thus allows emerging players to test the suitability of their services with the market under the aegis of a licensed institution, before applying for a license themselves,

able to be used for payment purposes ; second, care should be taken to ensure that the regulatory requirements are clearly formulated in order to avoid multiple layers of redundant regulation. 2 - the second lesson concerns the technical means to be implemented to reconcile openness and security, and in particular the use of apis. should there be an extension of sharing to other financial data, the psd2 directive calls for a more explicit definition of shareable data, a clearer allocation of responsibilities for authentication, and the promotion of the use of standardised apis. part ii : innovation and integration a - let me now turn to the new challenges posed by the development of open banking and its extension towards open finance. i will start with that of promoting innovation without undermining the integration of the european market. 1 - in the area of payments, we face a number of challenges, not least that of exchanges between financial intermediaries the development of the tokenisation of financial assets could lead to a proliferation of new infrastructures that would no longer be interoperable with each other, leading to a risk of market and liquidity fragmentation. 2 - this trade - off between innovation and fragmentation risk is also reflected in the settlement asset itself used in payment chains. if we take the example of stablecoins, their use for the settlement of tokenised financial assets could undermine the stability and efficiency of settlement transactions for new assets by fragmenting the field of settlement assets. 2 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches b - to reduce this risk of fragmentation, we have two levers. 1 - the first is cooperation between private players to support the efforts of the public authorities to establish a regulatory framework that is clear, proportionate and flexible enough to take account of rapid changes in the market and innovation. in this respect, there are certainly lessons to be learned from the framework developed for open banking. for example, the deployment of the apis i mentioned earlier proved to be more complex than expected due to heterogeneous applications, late developments and the lack of an underlying business model. in this light, two key principles could guide us. on the one hand, institutional players can act as a catalyst for private initiatives on standardisation. i am referring in particular to the mandate given to the european payments council ( epc ) for the creation of a dedicated open finance scheme, the sepa payment account access scheme ( spaa ). on the other hand, the debate on open finance should also be an opportunity to push for