Bold 'open banking' concept prompts bigger questions on transparency

A FEW weekends ago, this reporter was spending time hunched over a laptop, trying to figure out the reason behind certain exorbitant fee charges that had been imposed over a switch in certain banking accounts.

When she finally looked up after an arduous search, the sun had retired for the day, and she remained none the wiser at that point. (She emailed the banks and agencies involved, and then reached for a beer - yes, in that order.)

While this grievance is a personal matter - and resolved somewhat through a few cash vouchers - it does bring to mind the bigger, broader trend of "open banking" that banks are looking at closely.

The over-arching idea behind the "open banking" concept is for banks to open up their services to partners, typically through the use of application programming interfaces, or APIs - a set of…