The final phase of the Open Banking initiative goes live in Brazil today (15), according to the timescales announced by the country's Central Bank.

The fourth stage of the project sees the integration of services beyond the basic banking offerings introduced in the second stage, such as account balances and other services related to financial transactions.

This final stage of the Open Banking initiative in Brazil marks the shift into Open Finance. This is when the entire financial footprint of individuals with data such as mortgages, savings, pensions, insurance, and credit can be opened up to trusted third-party APIs upon consumer consent.

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Investment products, insurance, foreign exchange, and other financial services are added in the latest phase of the project. This will be gradually introduced: under the first stage of the fourth phase, institutions will undergo a certification process of the APIs relating to the products to be shared, to demonstrate their technology complies with the Central Bank's requirements.

After the conclusion of the certification stage, each product to be introduced under the fourth phase, such as insurance offerings, will be required to register in an API directory for Open Finance participants by March 4, 2022. Payment, foreign exchange, and investment products will be required to finish their registration process later that month.

The second stage of Phase 4 will start on May 31, 2022. At that point, Open Finance will be visible to consumers, as it will be possible to consent to data sharing across the services participant institutions made available through the model.

The latest developments around Open Banking/Open Finance in Brazil follow the introduction of the third phase in October, which enabled the introduction of new environments for making payments and, subsequently, new dynamics for credit operations.

This phase was originally planned to start in August but got postponed due to the need for adjustments in the technical specifications. Under the revised timescales, the new model will be fully rolled in Brazil by September 2022 rather than the end of 2021, as initially planned.

The Central Bank approved the Brazilian Open Banking project in early 2019 as part of a broader modernization agenda of the country's financial system. At the time, the plan was that the project would start in the second half of 2020, a timescale delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The implementation process started in February 2021.

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