FiDA negotiations on the home straight
The final negotiations on the Financial Data Access (FiDa) Regulation are well underway, and continue to cause controversy in the financial sector.
The German Insurance Association (GDV), for example, warned at the start of the trilogue that the obligation to pass on information to customers would create massive burdens for the industry. According to GDV Managing Director Jörg Asmussen, the regulation creates new bureaucracy with unclear benefits for consumers. The regulation ties up resources, inhibits innovation and ultimately makes products more expensive for customers, he criticised.
Regulations must be standardised
GDV expects the trilogue negotiations to be finalised under the Danish Council Presidency in the second half of 2025, but there are still a few nuts to crack before then. A note from law firm Simmons & Simmons states that harmonisation with the PSD3/PSR must take place in order to create uniformity in the open banking regulations.
This includes, above all, simplified processes for the approval of transactions for the so-called „Account Information Service Providers“ (AISPs), Simmons & Simmons partner Daniel Lühmann told Börsen-Zeitung.
Lühmann had already drawn attention to the considerable scope of the regulation at the beginning of April. He pointed out that the standardised provision of customer data would mean a lot of work for banks and insurers.
As data owners, the banks would have to set up independent IT projects for the implementation of Fida, the expert points out. According to Lühmann, this means a considerable amount of work, for which the institutions would then have to mobilise their IT staff. These staff are then at risk of being absent for the implementation of other projects.
Gatekeepers excluded
Another important point from the working paper on the trilogue became known recently. The Commission's proposal now stipulates that US internet companies will not be granted access to financial data of European bank customers under the FiDA regulation – which is actually supposed to stand for an open data ecosystem. The exclusion of so-called „gatekeepers“ is formulated on the basis of the definitions of the Digital Markets Act: „Companies designated as gatekeepers under Article 3 of the Digital Markets Act could be excluded from the financial information services provider licence.“
Resistance to be expected
Players such as Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft are unlikely to accept this so easily, and should be able to hope for support from the US government from the counter-lobby. US President Donald Trump has long considered the actions of EU regulators to be excessive. Excluding the Big Techs as data users, as called for in a German paper, could therefore meet with considerable resistance. The US companies have not yet publicly positioned themselves. However, players such as Apple, Microsoft and Meta are well networked in Brussels. The plans to limit Big Tech's access to data are also the result of a German initiative.
