The Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services has announced changes to the Consumer Data Right in order to increase its uptake by streamlining implementation and reducing compliance costs. Background.

The announcement follows the release of the Consumer Data Right compliance costs review report.

The changes include:

• consultation on changing the consent and operational rules to streamline the consent process for consumers to enable consumers to provide multiple consents in a single action.
• obliging data holders (including banks) to provide a simple process for businesses to be able to access their data.
• narrowing the data included in the CDR; products never likely to be used will be removed.

The new Standards Assessment Framework will formalise how changes are assessed using the 4 key criteria of consumer benefit, customer take up, cost and regulatory impact and keeping the system safe and secure.

Changes to the Data Standards will: 

• Be limited to a small, fixed number of scheduled releases per year.
• Include longer lead times for industry.
• Include explicit cost and regulatory impact consideration.
• follow a clear, transparent prioritisation process.
• be in collaboration and consultation with other CDR agencies and stakeholders.

Use cases

Use cases that are the highest priority are:

• Consumer finance and borrowing.
• Energy switching.
• Accounting services to small businesses.

The CDR will expand to non‑bank lending data early in 2025 so that it will be operational by the middle of 2026.

After the Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022 currently in the Senate is passed, further work will be required to determine what actions have value.

UPDATE: The “Action Initiation” Bill was passed by the Senate on 15 August 2024.

UPDATE: Royal Assent given on 26 August 2024.

Screen scraping

The government says that CDR should be the system of choice and that industry needs to move away from screen scraping as it is unsafe for consumers.

The Government intends to move to a formal ban on screen scraping.

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Author: David Jacobson
Principal, Bright Corporate Law
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About David Jacobson
The information contained in this article is not legal advice. It is not to be relied upon as a full statement of the law. You should seek professional advice for your specific needs and circumstances before acting or relying on any of the content.