I think life insurance is already pretty grabby with data, behind the scenes. We had a ton of data on some high value life policies we’d bought - down to records of all doctors visits. And even for lower value policies they can currently just ask you the important actuarial questions (e.g. are you a poor obese guy who smokes, rides a motorcycle & lives alone) and then deny the payout if you lied.

Given how disgustingly evil the US health insurance system is, my hope is that NZ resists the temptation to go there. I don’t have health insurance since moving back to NZ and it’s been fine. All the things I was told by the doctor “go private or the wait will be too long” turned out to have reasonable waits after all.

This is the real problem. And this ship has already sailed - google and data brokers are already creepily tracking your every online and offline move and tying them together.

Your financial providers are covered by a much, much more restrictive set of regulations preventing them from screwing you over like that.

Open Banking seems generally aimed at attacking the nasty behaviour banks have been getting away with, where they gatekeep your financial data in order to prevent you from getting any useful utility out of it unless you pay them extortionate fees.

Europe has GDPR, so you’re not legally allowed to collect data unless it’s necessary for the actual service you’re providing your customer, and you’re not allowed to use data for anything else once you’ve collected it for the purpose you stated.

Having said that, your customer will always have to prove who they are, how they acquired funds, and where funds are going. This is to prevent bribery & corruption, money laundering, terrorist financing, tax evasion etc.

I was working as a software developer for an EU investment bank when the EU implemented GDPR, and the amount of paperwork required to collect and hold personal data meant we destroyed a ton of data & documentation and rewrote a lot of software. And every spreadsheet containing personal data or which was used more than once had to be recorded in an EUC register with signed commitments about GDPR compliance. Even if data wasn’t strictly forbidden by GDPR we’d be very wary asking for any information which could theoretically be misused to discriminate against protected classes.

The NZ Privacy Act 2020 looks broadly similar in intent to the GDPR, so I imagine there’d be the same disinclination to collect information which can’t be proven necessary to perform the requested service or satisfy regulatory requirements.

I have several NZ insurance policies and they had no interest in transaction history. Same with my mortgage. I sent bank statements, but only as proof of address.

Only my credit card application wanted to drill into my spending, which is not unexpected considering it’s unsecured lending. For sure I’d rather approve the API access than try to find where I can download (& probably pay extortionate fees) for copies of historic statements

And working in finance (in UK & Europe), they generally collect and keep as little data as is necessary anyhow - personal data is a pain to safely manage these days, and I’m always keen to be responsible for as little of it as possible.

They’ll already insist on whatever information they feel is useful. This just saves them from scanning in your statements.

It sounds similar to the UK’s open banking system. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/517885/open-banking-how-to-opt-in-and-out-of-the-new-payment-system

I use UK open banking often. I’m always asked to approve the specific access requested, and this takes place at my bank’s website or app. This could be permission to take an amount of money; or for apps which manage multiple accounts (e.g. Emma) this could be all historical transactions; or my accountant uses an open banking service provider (Armalytix) to request transactions for an explicit date range. So far, touch wood, there’s always been an alternative - for example I can use open banking to send my transactions to my accountant or I can manually download a CSV statement from my bank and upload it into their portal.

Or, from the 99PI podcast a month ago…

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/towers-of-silence/