Giving People Control of Their Data is a £27 Billion Opportunity

By Ian Sillett, Director of Frontier Technologies at Challenge Works

When Open Banking was rolled out seven years ago, it gave people and businesses the right to share their banking data with innovative companies offering better financial services and much-needed competition in the banking sector.

It sparked a revolution that helped build world-leading British fintechs that created new services based on a narrow set of information – what goes in and out of a current account.

From that simple data, consumers gained access to new services like savings apps that automatically set aside affordable amounts each month, and mortgage tools that help self-employed people with irregular incomes get on the housing ladder. Small businesses began using services that calculate tax liabilities, predict cash-flow crunches and provide faster access to vital loans.

The fintech sector contributes £8.3 billion to the UK economy. As of July 2025, over 15 million people and businesses (around one in three UK adults) used Open Banking services. All of this was made possible because individuals were given the right to authorise trusted fintechs to view limited data about their income and outgoings.

Imagine the impact if we had the same ability to share far more of the data we generate in everyday life. That could include energy usage from smart meters, commuting data from tap-in and tap-out journeys, supermarket loyalty data, or information held by providers of pensions, insurance and mortgages. Although we create this data, companies hold it. They can use it, so why can’t we?

In June, the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 became law. It reforms how non-personal and personal data is managed to promote innovation and improve public services. Crucially, it lays the foundations for Smart Data schemes across different sectors of the economy.

Smart Data builds on the success of Open Banking. It could allow consumers and businesses to access and share their data simply and securely with third parties. Importantly, it is designed to make data interoperable across sectors such as energy, finance, property, travel and retail. That interoperability would enable services that combine multiple datasets to offer insights and products that were unthinkable a decade ago, boosting choice and competition. According to the Startup Coalition, the opportunity could be worth £27 billion to the UK economy.

To explore this potential, ten trailblazing companies have spent the year competing for the Smart Data Challenge Prize. Using synthetic data representing people living in an imaginary suburb of Manchester, they built working prototypes that demonstrate how people’s lives could be improved if they had the right to share more of their data.

The winners, Moverly and the Open Data Property Association, created a Digital Sale Ready Pack that aims to make buying and selling a home faster, more transparent and less stressful.

In the UK, it currently takes an average of 22 weeks to complete a transaction, with more than one in four sales collapsing. These failures cost buyers and sellers billions in legal fees, surveys and lost time. They also reduce mobility, drag on the housing market and undermine confidence in one of life’s biggest milestones.

The prototype Digital Sale Ready Pack brings together key information needed by sellers, buyers, conveyancers, surveyors and mortgage providers – such as land registry records, EPC data, council tax information, utilities data, title documents, searches and legal forms – into a single, trusted source.

The pack can be reused throughout the home-buying journey. Seller’s conveyancers can resolve issues early, such as mismatched names on title deeds. Buyers receive plain-English summaries. Conveyancers receive consistent, verified data with provenance. Surveyors can auto-populate reports, and lenders can access validated information to issue mortgage-ready status or full offers within minutes.

Moverly estimates that, if adopted at scale, average transaction times could fall from 22 weeks to under 12, with fall-through rates dropping from over 25% to below 10%. That could save each household up to £2,000 in direct costs, with market-wide efficiencies worth £2-3 billion annually.

Two runners-up also demonstrated compelling ideas. Nigel (short for “Now I’ve Got Everything Labelled”) is a platform that helps households manage data spread across more than 100 typical accounts, including utilities, banks, pensions, insurance, motoring and shopping.

Beyond Encryption, the company behind Nigel, wants people to be able to search all their accounts instantly, receive reminders for bills and renewals, and share documents securely with trusted family members, carers or advisers.

Open Transport, another runner-up, combines transport accounts, Open Banking data and official CO2 datasets to build a picture of a person’s travel activity across multiple modes. Its dashboard helps individuals understand their journeys, costs and emissions and offers personalised insights to encourage greener choices.

Across the prize, the teams identified what types of data need to be unlocked to make these prototypes work in the real world, and the opportunities that could follow if people were given the right to share that data.

Their work highlights the importance of developing robust, secure and interoperable data standards to bring together currently fragmented information and unlock value through greater transparency.

A Smart Data economy will not appear overnight. The ten teams spent a combined 11,000 hours building their prototypes, and real-world implementation will require continued collaboration between government, regulators and industry.

However, the initial groundwork has been laid, and the ideas are emerging. What is already clear is that giving people and businesses more control over the data they generate has the potential to transform services and increase choice – a key driver for economic growth.