The year that CDR got real: Why the time is now
This is an edited version of the CDR Summit 2025 Closing Remarks delivered by John Dunkerley, Chief Commercial Officer at SISS Data Services, headline co-sponsor of FinTech Australia’s annual flagship event highlighting the full value and potential of the Consumer Data Right (CDR).
I don’t believe we’ve had a CDR Summit before that has provided such insight into the world outside this room and the positive impacts CDR is having on the Australian community.
This morning, we heard how CDR-powered bank data feeds are being delivered to thousands of small businesses using accounting systems like QuickBooks, for greater safety in data sharing, leveraging the efficiency of increasingly automated business management tools, powered by AI.
We also heard how CDR is promoting financial inclusion and saving 3-5 hours per client for financial counsellors. As Dr Domenique Meyrick from Financial Counselling Australia said, CDR is now the “speediest way” to work out what’s in the shopping bags full of bills and statements their clients typically arrive with.
Taking into account the statistics Dan Jovevski from WeMoney shared, showing that around half of our fellow Australians are just surviving, and are worried about debt, the need for consumers to be able to gain and share safe access to their financial data, with people who can help them, is more acute than ever.
And if those statistics needed any more emphasis, having Ronette in the room with us today, sharing her story of how getting on top of her financial data helped her overcome 20 years of accumulated debt, powerfully cut through.
“CDR Summit 2025 will be remembered as the year ‘CDR got real’.”
In the spirit of keeping things real, I want to finish today by telling you a story.
The real reason small business accounting services is a high-value use case
Last night, at about 8pm, after finishing dinner with the kids and sending them off to the loungeroom to watch some TV, Michael and Sue went to their home office to catch-up on their small business’s finances.
It had been a typically long day, and they were tired. The last thing they felt like doing was sitting down at the computer to do the books, but they knew to keep on top of it, to manage their cashflow.
Doing the books for Michael and Sue is usually not too hard, just a bit tedious.
It’s mainly about making sure they’ve been paid by customers, that they’ve paid suppliers and employees, and that the various expenses they’ve incurred are recorded and correctly categorised.
Their goal is to make sure more money is coming in than going out, that they pay their taxes, staff and suppliers correctly, and that they have access to the working capital the business needs to survive and thrive.
Once they’ve done the books, there’s usually a few household bills to pay, some various bits of family and business admin to take care of, before they can call it a day.
The backbone of our nation’s economy
Michael and Sue are typical of the 2.6 million small businesses in Australia that make up 98% of all businesses, contribute $500bn to our economy, and employ 5.2 million Australians.
Those business owners, people just like Michael and Sue, stand to benefit enormously from the CDR, and I want to outline why it’s so important that we, in particular the people in this room, make sure we deliver CDR to them.
I also want to explain why I think now is the time, 5 years into CDR, to move Michael, Sue and millions of others like them across to CDR-enabled services.
Let’s talk about the “why” of CDR for small business
Thinking back to the nightly ritual of Michael and Sue, for their accounting software to work efficiently, and to save them from hours of manual data entry, they need their bank and credit card transactions to appear automatically in that software.
This is a common feature of the software, but often the mechanism by which that happens is screen scraping. This means that Michael and Sue have at some stage, perhaps unwittingly, handed over to a third-party data aggregator the ability to impersonate them via online banking access.
Almost certainly, they have violated the terms & conditions of their bank by sharing their login details. Worryingly, the transaction data that is scraped may have gaps and omissions causing frustration, re-work, or errors in their tax and financial reports down the track.
If Michael and Sue engage an accountant or bookkeeper, it is also likely they may trust that person with their passwords, so they can get hold of the necessary data or transact on their behalf.
With CDR-powered bank data feeds for their accounting software, screen scraping is no longer necessary.
“CDR promises a far better approach.”
Every transaction, from every one of their Australian bank accounts, can be accessed without putting their online banking credentials at risk, and open banking can also look back to historical data.
Michael and Sue can revoke their consent to the open banking data sharing at any time, for any reason, via their bank’s dashboard.
This rich and reliable bank data not only saves them manual data entry or rework, it powers the increasingly sophisticated small business accounting software which uses AI to classify those income and expense transactions. This means Michael and Sue can spend more time in the evening watching TV with the kids, rather than sitting at the computer in the spare bedroom.
And that’s just doing the books.
When it comes to making those payments to suppliers, employees and the ATO, in future CDR Action Initiation may deliver more efficiency and certainty, as outgoings can be easily scheduled and effected right from within their business systems, avoiding double-handling.
Access to debt capital to fund business growth
Thinking beyond the everyday bookwork, Michael and Sue will probably need funding during their business journey.
It might be an opportunity to grow their business, or it could be to cover an unforeseen cash flow shortage.
Sadly, at present there’s a strong chance that Michael and Sue will never get the money they need – why?
They might not realise they need it until it’s too late – if they’re not keeping their books up to date (or if they spend 100% of their admin time dealing with past transactions) they may not have the time or data to adequately forecast the future.
Even if they recognise the need or opportunity, they might think it's going to be all too hard or too time consuming to get their financial information ready to make an application for funding and so not bother.
And even if they do get their financial information in order and make the application, they might find it too confusing to compile and compare the alternatives and make a choice.
The small businesses of Australia often don’t get the funding they need because they don’t have their financial data ready, cannot easily provide it to potential lenders, or cannot easily compare the options that are presented to them. This is an underlying cause of numerous businesses performing poorly or even failing totally.
This common situation will be revolutionised by CDR – not only will their small business’s financial data be correct and up-to-date, additionally, their accounting system could extrapolate past patterns to predict future needs, and even facilitate the outreach and data sharing with potential lenders, all while comparing the offers of different lenders, and ultimately even optimising the scheduled loan repayments from their bank account back to the lender’s.
Let’s talk about the “Why now?”
It’s probably true that everyone in this room has been through their own version of the Gartner Hype Cycle when it comes to CDR’s timing and our expectations.
Having been in the bank data feed business for over 20 years, when I first became involved in Open Banking in the UK in the late 2000s, it was a dream come true.
Open Banking in the UK, PSD2 in Europe, and then CDR in Australia ... they all held the promise of what we in the data business had always longed for: transaction data from all banks and all account types, digital customer consent, secure, reliable, cheap. On top of that, the ability to elegantly yet securely initiate a bank payment from a third-party channel like accounting software.
It was the future. And I wanted to be part of it.
Of course, after the Peak of Inflated Expectations comes the Trough of Disillusionment.
I realised how hard it was going to be to deliver CDR-powered solutions to our customers due to the onerous compliance requirements, clunky consent processes, and data quality issues.
Yet over the past couple of years, we’ve progressed to the Slope of Enlightenment.
Changes to the CDR Rules, such as the Business Disclosure and Trusted Adviser provisions, have made all the difference.
As an Accredited Data Recipient, SISS Data Services could now provide CDR data solutions to our customers. In parallel with that, we’ve fine-tuned our data manipulation engine to overcome data quality issues and smoothed out consent flows. And it’s not just us of course, many of the ADRs here today have done the same.
Call to action to Treasury and the Minister – we need some finishing touches
I feel that we, as an industry, are now poised to enter the Plateau of Productivity, collectively delivering CDR to Australians at scale.
“There must be certainty about putting an end to the old ways. We need a firm date for the cessation of screen scraping.”
While ever this historical alternative to CDR persists, many large platforms will not commit to migrate their customers. In my own experience, over in the UK some years ago, it was only when a sunset date for screen scraping was stipulated that mass migration to Open Banking went from being a “future plan” to a “priority action.”
“Setting a date for the end of screen scraping will be a clarion call for both Data Holders and Data Recipients to ensure that the remaining friction points in CDR are collectively addressed.”
And that’s where cooperation comes in.
Many Data Holders have been dragged down the CDR path reluctantly, and as a Data Recipient, I acknowledge and respect that. Yet at the same time those Data Holders generally are no fans of alternatives like screen scraping either.
In the interests of our collective customers, we must work together to ensure that the move over to CDR is simple and smooth. In the case of business consumers, I would particularly highlight the “nominated representative” issue whereby many business consumers (up to 50% in our experience) embark on the CDR consent journey only to discover that they must first complete another, often manual, process with their Data Holder.
This causes confusion, frustration and in a very high proportion of cases, abandonment of the CDR consent process. So much so that we built the CDR Ready portal and made this available for free to all Australian consumers, so that they can check which accounts they are the nominated representative for, and take steps to remedy the situation where they are not. We don’t believe that such a portal should need to exist, and we look forward to it becoming redundant!
So, we join with others in calling for an “opt out” model to replace the current “opt in” model for nominated representatives, and we call for Data Holders to consider the challenges faced by their customers in accessing what is, in essence, their data. Let’s work together to deliver better solutions for Australian consumers.
About SISS Data Services
SISS Data Services is Australia’s leading independent open banking platform. With 10+ years’ experience in secure sharing of bank transaction data, its “ACSISS” range of solutions has earned the trust of banks, software platforms, and over 500,000 consumers. SISS is ISO:27001 certified and an active Accredited Data Recipient for CDR.
For more information, visit www.acsiss.com.au or email us at customerservice@siss.com.au
