More than 800 institutions are participating in Brazil’s open finance system, on both a mandatory and a voluntary basis, according to updated indicators released by the country’s central bank this week. On average, the system is exchanging 1 billion information calls via APIs each week, a substantial growth compared to the 200 million calls recorded in March 2022.
“Open finance is evolving as a new approach to providing financial services, with integrated finance. But the road is long,” said Jamile Leão, open finance solutions leader at Capgemini in Brazil. The country’s financial system has begun adapting to the new system, as players look for opportunities to participate and monetize.
Currently, the main challenges are data quality, storage and classification, and greater uptake is needed so that all institutions can make better use of the shared data, added Leão.
Still, according to a Capgemini survey, adoption in Brazil is faring well compared to the UK, which introduced open banking much earlier. The South American country has the highest number of API calls and a higher percentage of adoption among the banked population. But, more products and services are offered in the UK (94) than in Brazil (45), where use cases are highly focused on credit.
Nubank is the financial institution that exchanged the most information between January and May, receiving 46% of the calls, even more than the biggest banks. Brazil is leading the implementation of open finance in Latin America. Elsewhere in the region Mexico, Colombia and Chile are implementing open finance, although with different speeds.