Open Banking doesn’t sit at the top of many building societies’ board agendas. The day-to-day reality of mortgage pipelines, of competition for savings accounts, the changing regulatory landscape and cost pressures means Open Banking can sometimes feel like something peripheral – not an issue that sitting at the centre of strategy. Yet the direction of travel suggests it should be.
Look at adoption levels. In the UK, more than 15 million people and businesses were using Open Banking services by mid-2025 – close to one in three adults. Usage is growing year on year, with tens of millions of payments now processed via Open Banking every month. These numbers matter because they show that what began as a regulatory requirement is now becoming part of everyday financial behaviour. Customers may not always recognise the term, but they are already using services built on it. The environment has already shifted.
For building societies, this has yet to translate into immediate competitive pressure. Plenty of mutuals retain strong, trusted relationships with their members. Customers who already hold products with a building society are more likely to trust that organisation with their data than unfamiliar providers. Accenture's "Guardians of Trust" research showed 81 per cent of customers trust their main banking provider to keep their personal data secure, compared to just 45 per cent for digital banks. The trust advantage’ should not be underestimated – particularly at a time when consumers remain cautious about sharing financial information.
This caution is one of the key reasons Open Banking has not become a pressing operational priority. Many customers still want reassurance before consenting to data sharing. They want to understand who has access to their data, how long that access lasts and what benefit they receive in return. So not only is investment in technology required – we need investment in communication, too. It is not enough to build an API capability. Societies must build confidence, too.
There are more mundane, practical barriers. Legacy platforms continue to absorb budget and management attention. Many transformation programmes are long and complex, often focused on maintaining compliance rather than enabling new services. People don’t have the bandwidth to get their heads out of the weeds. And systems that are costly to maintain and difficult to integrate can limit the ability to experiment or deploy new digital capabilities at pace. The result is that Open Banking can appear as an additional burden rather than a strategic tool.
Either way, they’re missing the opportunity. Open Banking is not just a regulatory framework. It is a mechanism for improving the customer journey and reducing friction at critical moments. Mortgage origination offers a clear example. Access to verified income and expenditure data can reduce manual document handling and accelerate decision making. Platforms that utilise Open Banking data and digital workflows can deliver decisions in principle in seconds, improving the customer experience and operational efficiency.
For building societies, the most realistic opportunity Open Banking represents is for incremental improvement. It can support better affordability assessments, smoother account switching and faster onboarding. It can also help build a single, consolidated view of customers across products and channels. That consolidated view matters. It can reduce duplication and support more consistent service delivery. It can also enable more personalised engagement with customers, which is becoming a defining feature of modern financial services.
There’s a monetary case for Open Banking, too. It has created a growing ecosystem of technology providers and services. For societies willing to partner effectively with regulated third-party firms, this ecosystem offers a route to new capabilities without the need to build everything internally. Strategic partnerships can reduce development costs and accelerate delivery timelines, especially when combined with modern digital platforms that support integration.
A willingness to partner with third-party specialist reflects a broader shift across financial services. Once upon a time, outsourcing models focused heavily on cost reductions and defined technical outputs. Newer non-traditional models focus on outcomes, customer experience and long-term scalability. Mutuals are increasingly seeking partners who can support transformation, rather than simply deliver services against a fixed specification. In the context of Open Banking, this shift can be particularly useful. Few societies have the resources to develop end-to-end capability alone, but many can benefit from targeted collaboration.
The societies that benefit most from Open Banking will not necessarily be the early adopters. They will be the organisations that treat Open Banking as part of a wider digital strategy, rather than a mere technical initiative. By focusing on customer confidence, targeted investment and practical use cases, mutuals can drive meaningful change without taking unnecessary risk. In doing so, they can accelerate service delivery, transform customer journeys and maintain the trust that has long defined the mutual sector.
