Open banking could drive down the cost of advice, participants have predicted at a roundtable event hosted by Bravura Solution Limited.
The attendees, consisting of financial advisers, believe that customer spending data could be used to pre-populate the first few pages of fact finds, thereby lowering the cost of advice.
Participants at the roundtable also thought that open banking could bring access to financial advice to those who are in debt.
Nick Parsons, global chief technology officer at Bravura, said: "Open banking has huge potential to drive efficiencies in the UK’s advice community.
"Speeding up key processes such as cash flow modelling and fact finds could not only significantly cut the cost of advice but open it up to large swathes of orphaned clients that were left un-catered for following the Retail Distribution Review."
Sean Hawkins, strategic partnership manager at wrap platform Ascentric, said that open banking makes advice "more inclusive."
He said: "If you make things more efficient, it makes it easier to reach people who might otherwise ignore their finances. For example, people leaving university with debts might simply think their finances are bad and ignore the issue."
The group also said that this level of data analysis could also help empower investors so they have a better understanding of their spending habits, especially how it may change in retirement.
Chris Daems, director at Cervello Financial Planning, said: "We have clients where we have
spoken to them as they are coming into retirement and they don't know how much they are
going to spend.
"Open banking could truly test how much they are going to spend without them having to add it up every month."
