The OBL Future is Open podcast series is set to take centre stage at Open Banking Expo, with a run of live recorded conversations designed to push the debate beyond the near-term product roadmap and into what the ecosystem might actually look like in three, five and ten years’ time.
What the OBL Future is Open podcast series is promising
Open Banking Limited (OBL) says it will bring together voices from inside and outside the Open Banking ecosystem at a dedicated stand, The Future is Open, during the event. The sessions are billed as candid rather than ceremonial: OBL says attendees can expect ‘candid questions, informed debate and ideas with practical implications for the organisations building what comes next.’ Perspectives are said to span futurism, technology, data, policy, retail and the global community, with each conversation framed around a different view of the future.
That is the claim. Whether a live podcast format reliably delivers the kind of unguarded exchange that the word ‘candid’ implies is, of course, a function of who is in the room and how the questions are put. The format is at least honest about what it is: a structured public conversation rather than a closed-door working group.
OBL is encouraging attendees to add the sessions to their Expo agenda through the published programme. The Future is Open stand is positioned as an interactive fixture rather than a passive exhibitor space.
Live podcast conversations are a growing fixture at the Expo
The OBL Future is Open podcast is not the only audio-first format on the Expo floor. According to Open Banking Expo, The Engine Room is also set to bring live podcast conversations to the UK & Europe edition of the event. That gives the format a meaningful presence across the programme, and suggests the organiser sees recorded live debate as a draw in its own right rather than a sideshow between keynote slots.
The context for that is worth understanding. Open Banking Expo’s own speaking-enquiries page describes the event as having evolved well beyond its origins as a pure Open Banking event, positioning it now as a meeting point for leaders working across Open Finance, Smart Data, Payments, AI, Embedded Finance and the underlying infrastructure of financial services. If that scope is accurate, then a podcast series ranging from near-term product thinking to ten-year horizon scenarios at least fits the stated ambition of the broader programme.
There is also an established audio strand connected to the Expo world. Feedspot’s directory of Open Banking podcasts lists Open Banking Expo Unplugged as an easy-listening series produced by the team behind Open Banking Expo Magazine, suggesting the organisation has form in audio content beyond the conference floor itself.
The harder question: who defines ‘the future’ in these conversations?
The framing of a ten-year horizon is worth scrutinising. Open Banking in the UK has already moved through several regulatory phases and commercial pivots in less than a decade, and the distance between official projections and market reality has not always been short. Bringing in voices from futurism and the global community, as OBL says it plans to do, can widen the frame of reference or it can dilute the specificity that makes a forecast useful.
None of that is a reason to dismiss the series before a word has been recorded. A well-chaired live conversation can surface assumptions that a polished panel session would smooth over. The OBL Future is Open podcast format at least creates a public record of what the sector’s current thinking actually is, which has its own value when the same questions are revisited in three or five years.
The programme and session details are available through Open Banking Expo’s published agenda.
