After his panel session at Fintech Connect on unleashing the power of digital innovation, Bennett highlighted that traditional players in the market will experience an “inflexion point” and the technological disruption seen in other sectors will occur in banking in the next few years.

Bennett said that while there is a lot of debate in the industry about how to educate consumers, the way that the incumbents are doing it is wrong. Referencing the email that was sent out by Lloyds Bank to their customers this week about how “Open Banking benefits you”, he said that “the Lloyds approach of sending out a non-contextualised email is not very helpful. Barclays are at least trying to demonstrate it through their app.”

He went on to say that Tandem’s approach is to develop services which demonstrate to consumers the value of sharing their data, for example by improving how they manage their spending or get a better credit decision and will in turn, encourage customers to share data because they believe they will be able to save money. However for others, this will be an evolutionary change, rather than a revolutionary one.

“People are not going to say after all this time that they will share data with their bank. It’s a five to ten-year thing and Open Banking and data privacy will make it more of a gradual transition. GDPR is a good thing and we should expect consumers to be aware about how they share their data. I think social media has not helped because these companies haven’t been as transparent as they should have been about how they use people’s data.”

Bennett added that banks have a reputation for managing money well and that is why they pushed forward for a banking license for Tandem Bank. It is the bank’s responsibility to look after customer data and while GDPR is encouraging trust, progress will not be abrupt.