Ezechi "Ez" Britton has been appointed as the independent chair of the steering group responsible for designing the United Kingdom's next-generation open banking governance body — a moment that marks a decisive step in transitioning the country's financial data infrastructure from a compliance-driven mandate into a commercially ambitious, industry-owned regime. The appointment places one of British fintech's most recognisable figures at the centre of a reform that will determine the architecture of open finance for millions of consumers and businesses across the country.

The body at the heart of this transition, provisionally referred to as the Future Entity, is set to absorb the core functions currently managed by Open Banking Limited (OBL), including standard-setting, performance monitoring, directory management, and certification. Unlike its predecessor, the Future Entity will operate as a dedicated non-profit organisation under the direct oversight of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a structural shift that signals a deliberate move away from big-bank-driven governance toward a broader, regulator-anchored model. Its mandate extends beyond maintaining open banking application programming interfaces (APIs) to driving commercial open banking models and laying the technical groundwork for a far wider open finance ecosystem covering pensions, insurance, and wealth management.

From CMA Order to Market Maturity

To appreciate the significance of this governance transition, it is necessary to revisit the origins of the regime it is replacing. UK open banking was born out of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) 2017 retail banking market investigation order, which compelled the nine largest current account providers — collectively known as the CMA9 — to build standardised, secure APIs enabling authorised third-party providers to access customer data and initiate payments with explicit consent. The Open Banking Implementation Entity was created to execute that directive and was subsequently renamed Open Banking Limited.

That framework was architecturally sound for its purpose, but it was always limited in scope — legally bound to major retail banks and narrowly focused on basic payment and account data. A decade on, the market has demonstrably outgrown those constraints. UK open banking now serves more than 11 million active monthly users, a figure that illustrates both the consumer appetite for data-driven financial services and the inadequacy of an enforcement model designed for a much earlier and smaller market. Sustaining that growth requires governance with genuine statutory authority, industry-wide participation, and a funding model that does not depend on the legacy obligations of a handful of incumbent banks.

Secondary legislation under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 provides that statutory footing. The Act transfers long-term regulatory oversight to the FCA, equipping the regulator with explicit powers to supervise the permanent, industry-funded Future Entity as it assumes OBL's legacy responsibilities. This legislative underpinning transforms what was once a compliance exercise into an enduring pillar of the UK's financial infrastructure policy.

The Architect in the Chair

Britton's appointment as chair of the Future Entity Design Steering Group is unlikely to be read as a political gesture by anyone familiar with his biography. He was the founding chief executive of the government-backed Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT), an institution launched in the wake of the Kalifa Review of UK Fintech to accelerate the country's position as a global financial technology leader. Before stepping down from CFIT, he co-founded the venture builder Collectively Better and the fintech lending platform Neyber, and spent years operating as both a software engineer and a venture capitalist — a rare combination of technical depth and capital market literacy that few governance chairs can claim. In 2022, he was awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to diversity and young people.

His mandate at the steering group is substantive. OBL is currently acting as the neutral coordinator for the design process, convening a coalition of more than 30 banks, fintechs, and payment service providers to produce a comprehensive blueprint covering the Future Entity's operational scope, governance structure, technical capabilities, and funding mechanism. Britton will oversee the key decisions that shape that blueprint during what is an inherently contested transitional phase — one in which incumbents, challengers, and infrastructure providers all hold competing interests in the final design.

The Variable Recurring Payments Imperative

The timing of this structural reform is not incidental. The market is pivoting rapidly from static data-sharing toward real-time, account-to-account (A2A) payment infrastructure, and the Future Entity's technical mandate reflects that trajectory. A central focus of the new standards framework is scaling Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs). First-generation sweeping VRPs enabled automated money transfers between a customer's own accounts. Commercial VRPs, or cVRPs, extend that rail considerably — covering recurring bill payments, utility subscriptions, and e-commerce checkouts. In practical terms, cVRP allows utility billers to debit customers based on exact monthly meter readings rather than fixed estimates, protecting consumer liquidity and eliminating card network interchange fees for billers in the process.

By establishing standardised interface rules and enforceable technical uptime benchmarks, the Future Entity is positioned to provide the regulatory clarity that cVRP adoption has so far lacked. That clarity matters enormously: without consistent API performance standards and liability frameworks, commercial participants have had limited incentive to invest heavily in VRP infrastructure.

What This Means for UK Finance

The appointment of Britton and the formal design process now underway represent more than an institutional reshuffling. They mark the point at which UK open banking transitions from a regulatory experiment, imposed on reluctant banks, into a self-sustaining financial infrastructure governed by a broad coalition of market participants under statutory FCA supervision. If the Future Entity is designed well — with governance that balances incumbent interests against challenger ambition, and technical standards that genuinely accelerate cVRP and open finance — the United Kingdom retains a credible claim to global leadership in financial data infrastructure. If it is designed poorly, the country risks cementing 11 million active users as a ceiling rather than a foundation. Britton's task is to ensure the former outcome prevails.

Written by the editorial team — independent journalism powered by Codego Press.