Cameron Taylor, Chief Product Officer
The average bank customer now maintains relationships with three financial institutions, up from 2.5 in 2021, according to McKinsey’s 2024 Retail Banking Survey of more than 50,000 customers. For banks, that means the majority of customers are sourcing at least some financial products, whether it be credit, payments, treasury services, or investment accounts, from outside the institution. Open finance data provides a way to see exactly where those relationships exist and use that information to better serve customers and identify new opportunities.
Understanding Your Customers’ Financial Relationships
When a customer connects a third-party application to their bank account through an open finance integration, they authorize the bank to see which application is connecting, which accounts are involved and what data is being accessed. Over time, those connections build a detailed picture of a customer’s digital financial footprint outside the bank.
A business customer connecting their bank data to a platform that also offers mortgages provides a signal that they may have a mortgage with that institution. A commercial customer connecting accounts to a corporate card provider indicates they are sourcing credit externally. This kind of information has traditionally been difficult for banks to obtain. Open finance data makes it available in real time, through the customer’s own authorized connections.
For wealth managers or banks servicing high-net worth individuals (HNWIs), the opportunity is similar. HNW clients often hold assets across multiple institutions and advisory platforms. Connecting those accounts through open finance provides a consolidated view of a client’s financial relationships, which supports more informed advice and stronger client relationships.
How Can Banks Use Open Finance Data to Identify Business Development Opportunities?
One of the most direct applications of open finance data is identifying opportunities for add-on sales. If a large number of commercial customers at a bank are connecting their accounts to lenders, that pattern indicates unmet demand. Either the bank’s existing corporate lending is not meeting customer needs, or the bank does not offer that kind of loan product at all. In either case, the intel provides compelling data to shape financial products and marketing which can be addressed to grow share of wallet.
In “CFOs Speak: The Influence of Direct Bank Connections for Enterprise Open Finance,” a 2025 Ninth Wave survey of 200 senior finance leaders at companies with $50 million or more in annual revenue, 85% of respondents said they were extremely or very likely to switch banks if a competitor offered a direct connection to their accounting or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Open finance connection data shows banks which customers are already sourcing products from outside the institution, and where the gaps in the bank’s own offering may be driving that behavior.
Beyond identifying product gaps, connection data supports targeted outreach. A relationship manager who knows that a commercial customer has recently authorized a new fintech connection is better positioned to have a timely, relevant conversation about what the bank can offer.
How Does Real-Time Alerting Make Open Finance Data Actionable?
When a bank is notified the moment a customer authorizes a new application to access their account, it can act on that signal immediately, routing it to a relationship manager, flagging a product gap, or triggering an outreach workflow. When that same information is only visible in retrospect, the opportunity has usually passed.
Ninth Wave Portal, the analytics and monitoring layer of the Ninth Wave platform, gives banks that real-time view of activity. The Fintech Registry™, part of the Portal, provides additional context on which third-party applications are pulling customer data across the institution, and with what frequency. The Security Center provides more end-user data actual usage of these apps.
Building Stronger Customer Relationships Through Open Finance
McKinsey’s Banking Consumer Decision Journey Survey, conducted in May 2025, found that a customer’s primary bank is three to four times as likely to be considered for additional products and twice as likely to successfully cross-sell compared to non-primary institutions. Open finance connection data helps banks protect and strengthen that primary position by providing visibility into where customers are building relationships elsewhere.
Banks that treat every new app connection as a business signal rather than a compliance event will consistently know more about their customers’ financial lives than those that don’t.