Brenton Charnley, the former CEO of TrueLayer's Australian and New Zealand operation, has resurfaced with a consultancy startup to help businesses take advantage of open finance.
TrueLayer's reappraisal of the Australian market opportunity was signalled last month, when the UK-based open banking firm revealed plans to axe ten percent of its staff across offices in London, Milan, Dublin, and Sydney. The firm told local press that it had "paused" its activity in Australia to instead double down on opportunities elesewhere, including in Europe.
TrueLayer opened its first Australian office in 2019 and eventually went live in September last year, after receiving approval by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission as an unrestricted Accredited Data Recipient under the Consumer Data Right (CDR) act and promoting Charnley to CEO.
In his new consultancy, Open Finance Advisors, Charnley will offer specialist advisory services including strategy, accreditation support, use case discovery and design, and programme implementation in order to help businesses access open banking data.
Despite the broad vision of the CDR, open banking in Australia is currently limited to read-access data sharing only. As of 1 November 2022 there are only 23 active Accredited Data Recipients and 112 active Data Holder brands as reported by the ACCC.
“For CDR to take off, we need more use cases getting into the hands of consumers," says Charnley. "Open Finance Advisors’ mission is to make that happen. Having lived and breathed open banking and the CDR since its launch in 2020, we can help Australian and international businesses understand their options to access CDR data and then support them to make it a reality.”
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