Introduction to Consumer Data Right Australia

Consumer Data Right known as CDR for short has its roots with the “Review into Open Banking in Australia” presented to the Australian government. After which the government decided to legislate the Consumer Data Right late November 2017.

The Primary motive of CDR is to provide consumers the mechanism to obtain data from their service providers to allow comparing and to switch between service providers or products; increasing competition with service providers to yield better prices and provide innovative services or products.

In short, the CDR will enable customers to share their data with competitors and other services with the consent of the customer.

The introduction of a consumer data right in Australia is a fundamental competition and consumer reform. The ACCC is delighted to lead the data right and to work in the best interest of consumers, — Rod Sims ( ACCC Chairman)

Applications of Consumer Data Right

Consumer Data Right is not fixed to one sector. The start would be Banking and will expand to energy and even telecommunication.

Understanding Consumer Data Right

To understand consumer data right and it’s usage first we must look at the key actors involved in a CDR context.

CDR Consumer will be the end user who will be benefited from CDR, the consumer will be able to request the Data Holder who is the organization which CDR will be applied to provide data to the consumer.

A Data Recipient is an accredited party that will be able to request CDR data from a Data Holder with the consent of the consumer. Data Recipients give s consumers a new perspective on their data and allow them to compare and gain better insights.

What data will be offered by Consumer Data Right?

The CDR enables the consumer to open up information to their person or another accredited data recipient with consent. The data mainly falls into two basic categories.

1. Information regarding themselves in a certain industry that is held by or held on behalf of the requested consumer.
2. General information on the product/services by the provider, this data is not in any way relatable or identifiable to any certain consumer and will be available for all consumers or accredited data recipient.

Safeguards set in place for the best interest of the consumers

The CDR is drafter with many safeguards in place for different scenarios, I’ll talk about some of the main safeguards put in place for the best interest of the consumer.

1. Data Holders should be equipped with the facility to allow the revocation of authorization consent, In the case where the consumer feels that a data holder doesn’t need access to the consumer's data.
2. Consent must be given in clear easy to understand language and accepted voluntarily by the consumer before data recipients are allowed to access CDR data.

Open banking Australia is the first to benefit from the CDR and is well on its the way with a regulatory draft specification released and is under active development under Data61 on an open collaboration model.