Open Banking gives you access to your customers’ transaction data with their consent. But access and accuracy aren’t the same thing.

More than 13 million people now use Open Banking services across the UK. That’s real progress. The problem? A lot of the infrastructure supporting those connections is still patchy. Legacy systems, inconsistent standards and variable data quality all affect what flows through.

Mislabelled transactions can skew affordability assessments. Missing income sources can hide financial stress. And incomplete feeds can make a dataset look robust when it’s actually unreliable.

For firms using this data to evidence affordability, identify vulnerability, or meet Consumer Duty standards, that’s a problem worth fixing.

Here are five signs your Open Banking data might not be as complete as it looks.

1. Using unvalidated Open Banking data is distorting your decisions

If your Open Banking data is flowing straight into your systems without any form of validation or reconciliation, that’s a red flag. It means you’re relying on raw inputs rather than verified insight. And that can distort everything from affordability scores to vulnerability indicators.

The FCA’s latest research highlights how uneven standards and fragmented infrastructure across providers continue to affect data reliability. In practice, that inconsistency can lead to duplicated transactions, miscategorised spending, or gaps in income data, issues that compound as they feed into internal models.

The impact isn’t always obvious either. A customer might show surplus disposable income while undisclosed credit commitments stay hidden. Salary patterns might look regular when they’re actually intermittent payments from multiple sources. Without verification, those details disappear, and the decisions that follow become harder to defend.

Besides, if your process starts with connection rather than confirmation, you’re not working with a dependable foundation.

What makes AperiData different: As a regulated Credit Reference Agency, AperiData validates and categorises data before it reaches your system. Every feed is cleansed, reconciled and standardised so you’re working with insight that’s complete, consistent and decision-ready.

2. When Open Banking income and expenditure data don’t reconcile

If affordability calculations aren’t matching what you see in customer outcomes, data consistency is probably the culprit.

Income might look stable, but spending tells a different story. Or essential expenses are there, but buried under vague categories. Incomplete feeds, missing secondary accounts and inconsistent data standards all play a part. The result is an affordability view that looks precise but isn’t.

Legacy systems are part of the problem. The FCA’s analysis highlights how outdated infrastructure and inconsistent standards create gaps in reliability. Income gets double-counted when wages land in multiple accounts. Regular expenses get miscategorised. Small errors build into bigger distortions.

That creates risk when you’re evidencing Consumer Duty or vulnerability outcomes.

The real issue is context. Affordability is about stability, predictability and sustainability over time. Without that layer, your models lose their edge. Early warning signals of financial stress go unnoticed.

What makes AperiData different: AperiData enriches transaction data with advanced categorisation and income verification models. These identify and align recurring income, essential spend and debt obligations across all accounts. You get a complete, reconciled picture of a customer’s financial position, where income and expenditure actually add up.

3. Stopping at transaction-level analytics limits insight and accuracy

Categorising income and spend is a start. It’s not the finish line.

Transaction history shows you what happened. It doesn’t tell you why, or what’s changing. True financial understanding comes from recognising patterns, such as income volatility, irregular payment cycles, rising discretionary spend, and early signs of repayment stress.

Most firms never get there. Their data isn’t structured or validated enough to support behavioural insight. The FCA points to the same limitation: fragmented systems and inconsistent standards make it difficult to extract reliable signals from raw transactions.

That lack of depth has consequences. Risk models over- or under-estimate affordability. Vulnerability teams miss early indicators of strain. What looks like a consistent financial picture might actually be a household edging closer to difficulty.

You know what’s even harder? Spotting those changes when your data stops at the surface.

What makes AperiData different: AperiData interprets transaction data in context. It links patterns in income and expenditure to real indicators of affordability and financial resilience. Raw data becomes evidence that credit and collections teams can actually act on.

4. Missing data lineage means you can’t evidence Open Banking decisions

If you can’t explain how a decision was made, you can’t defend it.

That’s becoming a real issue as firms pull in more external data to inform affordability, vulnerability and credit risk assessments. Open Banking feeds come from multiple sources. Every step (ingestion, categorisation, and scoring) needs to be transparent. Without that audit trail, showing how you reached an outcome becomes difficult.

The FCA’s report highlights the same risk. Fragmented systems and uneven data standards make it hard for firms to maintain a consistent chain of custody from source to model. You’re left trying to evidence decisions when the lineage isn’t clear.

There’s another problem, too. Without traceability, you can’t diagnose errors or improve performance. A single miscategorised transaction can cascade through an affordability model, skewing results long before anyone spots it.

Naturally, that makes regulatory scrutiny harder to address.

What makes AperiData different: Every dataset AperiData delivers is traceable back tothe  source. As a regulated CRA, we apply strict governance and data lineage controls. That means firms can evidence the accuracy and integrity of each decision, and every outcome can be explained and defended.

5. A one-size-fits-all Open Banking feed won’t meet your data needs

If your data supplier gives you the same feed they give everyone else, it could be a sign they don’t understand your use case. Every organisation applies data differently — affordability in consumer lending looks nothing like vulnerability detection in utilities — yet many providers still push the same unrefined dataset to every client.

That’s where insight starts to lose relevance. The FCA’s latest analysis highlights how commercial misalignment across the Open Banking industry has slowed progress. Providers focus on connection volumes, rather than outcome quality, leaving firms to retrofit generic data into models that were never designed for it.

When data isn’t shaped around your use case, it can lead to missed indicators, inefficient workflows, and unnecessary operational costs. What feels like flexibility at the point of integration often becomes rigidity once it hits production.

What makes AperiData different: AperiData adapts its data to the way each client uses it by refining, filtering and structuring feeds to match specific use cases across credit, collections and vulnerability. That flexibility means firms get data that fits their processes, rather than the other way around.

Precision is the difference

The promise of Open Banking has always been clarity and creating a complete, data-driven view of a customer’s financial reality. But as adoption grows, it’s becoming clear that not every data source delivers the same level of confidence. Inconsistent standards, legacy systems and limited validation mean even the most advanced models are only as good as the data behind them.

That’s why precision matters. Firms that invest in accurate, well-structured and verifiable data meet regulatory expectations, but more importantly, they build fairer, more resilient customer outcomes.

AperiData exists for exactly that reason. As a regulated Credit Reference Agency specialising in Open Banking data, it bridges the gap between access and assurance, delivering transaction data that’s complete, consistent and credible enough for critical decisions.

Learn more about how AperiData helps firms strengthen their Open Banking data quality and assurance.