How to Win Open Banking through Action
By Dan Crowley, VP of Corporate Development at Personetics
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Consumer-driven banking represents a structural shift in financial services. For years, transaction data has been treated as a static record of the past. Today, it is becoming the foundation of the future customer relationship through tools like Personetics’ Cognitive Banking Platform, which leverages transaction intelligence. Most industry focus remains on the mechanics of data sharing. But the real opportunity lies beyond the rails of data sharing, in what can be done with the data once it is available. This is where transaction intelligence becomes critical. It transforms raw transaction data into meaning, and meaning into action.
The strategic imperative is clear. Banks must move from a defensive posture focused on compliance to an offensive growth engine powered by data-driven action. Open banking runs on customer consent, but consent is not given freely; it is earned. Customers will not share their financial data simply because they are asked. The most effective way to earn that trust is to demonstrate value using the data banks already have.
When institutions show they can turn internal data into relevant, personalized experiences, customers become more willing to extend that trust to external data sharing. This creates a data-value flywheel driven by actionable insights. As banks deliver value from aggregated data, customers share more, reinforcing the loop.
For example, a bank may identify that a customer is holding savings externally. It can then present a personalized offer and enable a one-click transfer, potentially doubling the customer’s return. When direct deposit is going elsewhere, the Cognitive Banking Platform can prompt a switch at the moment of highest relevance.
Trust is earned through consistent, tangible value delivered over time.
Need to Know:
- Open banking presents a strategic growth opportunity where banks must leverage platforms to turn fragmented transaction data into personalized, value-driven customer experiences that earn essential consumer consent.
- By operationalizing the data-value flywheel, institutions can use transaction intelligence to provide relevant insights that encourage deeper data sharing and create a sustainable first-mover competitive advantage.
- Primacy and ROI are driven by action. Customers don’t need multiple financial control centers; the first bank to become the central hub wins. Banks that move first to embed seamless, one-click execution into insights are seeing outsized gains in deposits, AUM, and retention.
The Race for Primacy
Banking customers are increasingly multi-banked. Globally, 73% of bank customers use multiple banks beyond their primary institution. Managing finances across these relationships has become fragmented and time-consuming.
Open banking creates the conditions to solve this fragmentation, but it also creates a new competitive dynamic: the race to become the default financial interface. Just as no one needs two remote controls for their TV, most will gravitate toward a single app that provides a complete view of their financial life.
The institution that becomes that app by leveraging advanced data-driven capabilities gains a powerful advantage. Once a customer has aggregated accounts, built habits, and relies on a single interface for daily financial awareness, switching becomes unlikely.
The winner will not be the bank with the most features. It will be the one customers open first, every day. This is the battle for customer primacy. And it will be decided quickly. The urgency is clear: 84% of bank customers are willing to switch banks for more personalized service.
Primacy is not just about convenience. It determines who owns the customer relationship, who captures deposits and who becomes the hub for financial decision-making. In a multi-banked world, the primary interface powered by transaction intelligence becomes the system of engagement. Everyone else becomes a product provider behind the scenes.
From Insight to Action
Many banks have invested in dashboards that visualize spending, budgets and cash flow. Dashboards explain the past; they rarely change the future.
The next phase of competition is defined by moving from visualization to prediction and action. This starts with data harmonization. Transaction data must be cleansed and enriched to create a usable foundation. But clean data is only the beginning.
The real value emerges when that data is fed into predictive systems that anticipate customer needs and trigger relevant actions. Using Cognitive Banking, institutions can:
- Forecast balances and potential shortfalls before they occur
- Identify opportunities to increase savings based on real cash flow
- Detect subscriptions or fees that can be reduced or eliminated
- Automatically increase savings contributions when surplus cash is detected
- Offer pre-approved credit line adjustments at the moment of need
Crucially, these insights must be paired with execution. The ability to act instantly and seamlessly is what drives outcomes. For example, when a recurring subscription is identified as unused or overpriced, the customer can cancel it with a single click directly from the insight. Insight without action is interesting. Insight with execution drives engagement and growth.
The institutions pulling ahead are those that have operationalized a closed loop of data, intelligence and action by embedding one-click actions directly into every insight. This transforms banking from reactive to proactive and fundamentally improves the customer experience.
Operationalizing Open Banking
While open banking is often framed as a compliance activity, its real power lies in enabling immediate, easy action that creates a win-win: customers feel understood and in control, while banks see materially better KPI performance compared to traditional next-best-action approaches.
With a full view of customer activity, banks can surface risks and opportunities and allow customers to act on them instantly, directly within the digital experience.
This includes:
- Detecting external balances and enabling one-click transfers to recapture funds, reducing leakage and improving deposit growth
- Identifying high fees or suboptimal products and enabling immediate switching or optimization
- Providing proactive fraud and anomaly detection with one-tap confirmation or dispute actions, reducing risk exposure and operational workload
These capabilities directly impact business performance. For customers engaging with Personetics’ insights, we continually see measurable bank growth, including:
- 20%+ increase in deposit growth
- 20%–30% fewer dispute-related calls due to enriched transaction descriptions
- 20%+ improvement in attrition
By enabling clear, actionable insights, banks reduce confusion and allow customers to resolve issues instantly, lowering support calls and operational costs.
To compete effectively, banks should focus on four priorities:
- Unify and enrich data across internal and external sources
- Deploy predictive intelligence that anticipates needs
- Embed action into every insight
- Design for primacy as the default financial interface
Open banking, when executed effectively, becomes a multiplier across growth, retention and efficiency.
The Bottom Line
Open banking will not reward participation. It will reward execution, and the window to act is closing quickly.
The institutions that move first to turn data into action using transaction intelligence will capture the primary customer relationship, drive measurable growth and build lasting loyalty.
Those that remain focused on data access and visualization alone risk becoming infrastructure providers in someone else’s ecosystem.
The opportunity is clear. The question is who will act on it first.
