Interview with Kalkine Media about the Consumer Data Right

Mark was interviewed by Kalkine Media, a business and finance media organisation. View the interview here and read the transcript below.

Sage Kavita Godrei, Kalkine Media

Good afternoon, everyone. This is Sage and we are going to bring you an expert to talk about their insights on Kalkine Executive Corner. Today we have Mr Mark Perry, the chief customer officer from Biza.io. And we're going to take a closer look at the world of consumer rights in Australia, in particular in the banking sector. So where we have seen recently, some Australian banks come under the spotlight for non compliance. As you know, we bring you the industry leaders, successful business owners all under the one roof to help you discover the insights of the stock markets. So today's show has Mr Mark Perry the chief customer officer of Biza.io joining us. Welcome, Mark. It's a pleasure to e-meet you.

Mark Perry

Thank you Sage. Pleasure to be here.

Sage

Well, founded in 2017, Biza.io is a fintech that helps the banking industry comply to strict regulations. So let's find out more. Biza.io, Mark, is an innovative technology company that develops banking and compliance software for the financial services industry. Would you please share your inspiration behind launching the brand?

Mark

Yes, certainly. So our founder, Stuart Low, saw a gap in the market when the ACCC and the other regulators in Australia were looking to introduce the Consumer Data Right, which is a way for banks to open up access to data for their customers and to share them with Fintechs and other accredited third parties. Stuart really saw that there was an opportunity there to take the specification which was being built for that, and to produce software that enabled these different participants to become compliant with that specification. And now we're very close to the time when all banks need to be complying with the spec. And there are many data recipients also in the regime. So we've seen a huge growth in the take up of the Biza platform for that purpose.

Sage

Fantastic. Sounds like it was just waiting to happen, and your team were the right people for the job. So how do you help your clients to get optimum benefits through the transformational opportunities offered by the emergence of Blockchain technology?

Mark

Uh, yeah, look, to be honest, we looked at Blockchain very early in the life of the business, and we put that on hold for the moment because of the really pressing need to provide Consumer Data Right services and software. And so we see Blockchain as an opportunity, perhaps in the near future, but not right at the moment.

Sage

Sure, thank you for your insights. So you provide your services to both data holders and data recipients. Would you please elaborate on how each party benefits from your brand?

Mark

Yes. So the data holders are generally the banks or people taking deposits from customers, and the government has asked them to open up that data to third parties. So we provide the platform, Biza's Data Holder as a Service, which is a managed service that allows people to integrate their core banking systems and comply with all of the APIs and security regulations of the Consumer Data Right. That gives them the ability to very quickly be compliant and to then start operating in the ecosystem. And likewise, on the other side of the transaction, there are the data recipients and Biza' software allows them to test against our mock bank and our mock registry so that they can build their software to receive that data from the banks and then provide compelling products for their customers.

Sage

Fantastic. Well, This is such a great innovation. Um, your product that you've launched Australia's first customer data right-complaint Open Banking sandbox. Would you please talk about how this functions and what the benefits it entails to clients?

Mark

So that's compliant DataRight sandbox Yes. So very much what that is about is providing a full end to end environment where people can do testing of their applications, but also testing of the integration required for them to become a data holder. So making use of the Biza software from the holder and the recipient side and then plugging into that, running transactions. We've got a full mock up of the register so they can test against that before they go into compliance testing with the ACCC itself. And this saves people a lot of time and particularly those who would seek to perhaps develop this themselves from scratch. That saves them a lot of money as well.

Sage

Exactly. And I can see, as banks are trying to keep up with the innovation is being seen in payments and other fintech it would be very important for them to stick with the regulations and comply at this time. Would you please shed some light on the distributed fallacy regarding Blockchain if you could.

Mark

Uh, yeah, look, as I mentioned, we're not really going down the Blockchain path, so that's probably based on some some old information on our website that's not relevant at the moment, so I'll pass on that question.

Sage

Okay, sure. Well, let's move on then, to the opportunities you see the customer data right unlocking within the Australian financial sector. In your opinion, do you think this could be quite groundbreaking?

Mark

Absolutely. And we're very, very bullish on this. We see that the Consumer Data Right has the potential to be the future of eCommerce in Australia. If you look at what it does for organisations who wish to consume data and then apply that to different products and services and offers to customers, it's enormous.

But around that, of course, there's the whole issue of customer privacy, customs, security and making sure that this data is managed and secured while stored in different places. So there are a lot of checks and balances built into the rules of the system and also the underlying specification—the technology which requires a certain level of security and privacy around that. So we see it as a very important place. Essentially, it will move from banking next into the energy sector. So energy retailers will be asked, will be mandated to share that data with third parties who are accredited in the CDR. The next-off will be telco. And then we're looking perhaps moving into insurance and superannuation as part of the next stage of the CDR. And if you look into the future, you can see a basically a web of data sharing within Australia that allows companies to get access to certain data consented by their customers and make use of that for a really interesting use cases.

Sage

Absolutely. I can see the ACCC being happy that companies like yours are out there. And I've heard of other SaaS software as a service products being really useful for helping the mining companies to comply to the ESG, um, policies, et cetera. So moving on if we could, um, the coronavirus downturn has affected a lot of businesses and causes somewhat of a distribution of power. How did you deal with the aftermath effects? And did you were you able to sustain and grow your business?

Mark

Yes, yes, we have. We're a startup. So we're fairly lucky that we have a small number of people in the team. We're distributed around Australia. We have good technology to connect us, but really, it's been a matter of keeping the team motivated, making sure that people are watching the number of hours they're working and not burning themselves out and keeping the team morale and communication up so that we can retain our our edge when it comes to delivering for our customers.

Sage

Fantastic. So we're just about to wind up here. Do you think that your product will help customers to streamline, maybe even avoiding, going to the ombudsman by heading to you first? Is that how it's planned to work?

Mark

Yeah, Look, not us directly. I would describe us, really as the plumbing in the CDR. We're the people who connect the banks with the application developers and the fintechs and what have you but yes, absolutely. The CDR is meant to allow people to have greater visibility and greater control over their data, and I think that's a really good thing. We'll stop a lot of the issues people have about learning about bad fees or extraneous charges after the fact. And we'll give people the ability to really have control over their, not only their financial data, but other data as well. And we see ourselves playing a role in that certainly.

Sage

Excellent. Thank you so much for that. So any news about what's coming up in the pipelines for your business Biza.io?

Mark

Yes. Look, I think right now we're delivering our customers into the CDR. We just this week, put another data holder into production, and we've got a number of those coming on board by the end of this month, by the July 1 deadline. But after that, really, the focus will shift to payments, payment initiation and action initiation in the CDR. So the ability to make payments from different vendors through the banks that are connected into the CDR. And, as I said, moving on to energy and the other industries and being able to provide access to that data in a way that makes it economical for people to deliver new products and services.

Sage

Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your insights on the show today Mark, we really appreciate your time. And were there any final thoughts you'd like to add before we finish up for today?

Mark

Yeah, I think that the CDR is a really interesting thing that people should be tracking, and there are opportunities for this to be shared, this technology to be shared with overseas jurisdictions as well? So there's certainly an export opportunity in the future.

Sage

Fantastic. Thank you so much again for your time. And viewers, if you've just joined us, I want to hear those fabulous insights again. The full discussion from the chief customer officer Mark Perry from Biza.io will be available via the YouTube channel Kalkine Media within the next 24 hours or so. Thanks for joining us viewers. Please stay tuned for more live market updates and expert interviews to come and, as we say, stay apprised and invest wise with Kalkine.