The Financial Conduct Authority‘s (FCA’s) FCA Open Finance mortgage sprint has concluded that the central obstacle to improving mortgage journeys in the UK is not a shortage of data, but a shortage of trust, infrastructure and accountability around it.
The regulator published its Outcomes Report following the Mortgages and Open Finance Policy Sprint, which took place on 8 and 9 June 2026 at the FCA’s offices at 12 Endeavour Square, London, according to FCA Innovation. Mortgages were chosen as a priority test case for the sprint, the FCA said, ‘because mortgage decisions depend on information held across multiple organisations, over long periods of time’.
What the FCA Open Finance mortgage sprint actually found
The Outcomes Report is direct on its central finding. ‘Success will depend on whether data can be treated as trusted evidence,’ the FCA said, ‘and whether the infrastructure, accountability and participation arrangements needed to support adoption are in place.’ In other words, the challenge is not access to more data, but what sits beneath it.
Sprint participants identified ‘fragmented mortgage journeys’ as the problem Open Finance could address. Currently, consumers manually gather documents and provide explanations at different stages of the process. Open Finance, the participants argued, could enable relevant data to be pulled together and digitised, reducing that burden.
The caveats, however, are substantial. Participants acknowledged that the value of Open Finance will depend on whether relevant information is ‘accurate, current and reliable’, and whether firms can recognise and use it appropriately at different points in the mortgage journey. There was also consensus that many of the benefits depend on broad participation by key organisations, and ‘would be difficult to realise if adoption remained uneven’.
On that point, the report was clear: mandation was ‘strongly suggested as a vital intervention across several areas’, including participation by key organisations, minimum datasets, technical standards, recognition of evidence and common governance requirements. The FCA is not, then, relying on voluntary uptake to make this work.
Personalisation, consumer outcomes and what comes next
Sprint participants reached a carefully hedged conclusion on consumer benefits. Open Finance may enable more personalisation within the mortgage process, they said, but success will ‘largely depend on whether consumers are able to make more informed decisions, find it easier to obtain a mortgage, receive appropriate support and can understand, correct or challenge outcomes where necessary’. The emphasis on redress and consumer control is consistent with the FCA’s broader conduct agenda, though the conditions for delivering it remain, for now, prospective.
Simone Plances, manager, Smart Data Accelerator at the FCA, set out the regulator’s position in a LinkedIn post: ‘The challenge isn’t access to more data. What matters is what sits underneath. Creating the trust, infrastructure and architecture needed to enable better data to improve consumer outcomes. Across the mortgage journey as well as any other part of consumers’ financial lives.’
The next phase of the Smart Data Accelerator’s work will examine data-sharing architecture, roles and responsibilities, data journeys, and the ‘key components’ of infrastructure and trust, including identity and verification, authorisation and certification, and the interdependencies between agentic AI and Open Finance. The FCA said the sprint outputs will be used to inform future policy development.
The broader Open Finance timeline
The mortgage sprint sits within the FCA’s Open Finance Roadmap, published on 14 April 2026, according to TLT LLP. The roadmap confirmed that a regulatory framework for Open Finance in the UK will be in place by the end of 2027. TLT LLP also notes that by 2027 the FCA intends to be working with the Treasury on the regulatory framework itself, suggesting the 2027 target represents the start of formal co-design with government, not a finished product.
Mortgages are not the only priority. According to HLC, the FCA’s agile approach will see it prioritising lending to SMEs alongside improving consumers’ access to mortgages as two ‘high-impact use cases’ where Open Finance can deliver benefits most quickly in 2026. The mortgage sprint is therefore one of two concurrent workstreams the regulator considers its fastest route to demonstrable impact.
Throughout this year, the FCA has been engaging with industry, consumer groups and fellow regulators on ‘practical’ Open Finance use cases through its Smart Data Accelerator and PRISM (Prioritisation and Real-world Insights Selection Matrix) Taskforce. Simone Plances and Ekaterina Borisova of the FCA’s Smart Data Accelerator are speaking at Open Banking Expo UK and Europe 2026 on 13-14 October at the Business Design Centre in London, where the mortgage sprint findings are likely to feature prominently.
