Acceptance of Open-Banking Technology in Consumer Lending Applications

Master's Thesis from the year 2022 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 1,0, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (Department of Finance and Banking), language: English, abstract: This master thesis investigates the influencing factors on consumers' willingness to share their personal and financial information through open-banking technology in different financing and lending scenarios (e-commerce, car financing, and mortgage). To achieve this, a survey-based empirical study was conducted, covering a variety of questions regarding demographic factors as well as measured preferences and stances along the dimensions of tech-savviness, open-banking knowledge, privacy concerns and financial literacy. The analysis of over 143 survey responses shows how these factors influence and explain, to what extent and under which conditions a consumer is willing to let a company digitally take a direct look into his bank account. The gained results and insights provide a basis to define best practices and use cases for scenarios in which open-banking technology can add value to all parties involved. Since January 12th, 2016, the EU's second payment services directive (PSD2) has been in force. A key point within the PSD2 is the obligation of banks to make the information of their customers and their associated bank accounts available to third parties via standardized interfaces. A concept that is widely referred to as open-banking. One major field of application of open-banking technology lies within consumer credit application processes. The main idea is that lenders (financial institutions as well as non-financial / retail companies) can get access to the information contained in bank accounts, such as transaction history and balances, by explicit consent of the consumer. The purpose of this is to make more informed decisions as to whether or not to extend credit to the specific person in scope.