Benefits of the Consumer Data Right

The Consumer Data Right

The Consumer Data Right (CDR) allows consumers to leverage their own data easily. It lets you share certain information safely with approved organisations you trust, so you can get better services, compare options, and make informed decisions. In some sectors there are also approved activities consumers can instruct companies to do on their behalf (for example, to make banking payments) – making things easier and more productive.

Key benefits

• Empowerment: you choose who can access your data and why
• Simplicity: providing your data becomes easy, fast and more secure
• Productivity: do more with less effort while having full control of what is done and for how long
• Better deals: compare plans and products easily by sharing your data securely
• Innovation: new apps and services can help you budget, switch providers, or automate tasks
• Market information: organisations can quickly and easily access product information from other organisations for developing new services and offerings
• Competition: organisations compete harder when consumers can move easily and other organisations can easily access market information

How the CDR could work for you

The Consumer Data Right is designed to unlock benefits across many parts of everyday life. Right now the CDR framework is only for the banking sector but is designed to work across many sectors. In future it could be extended to energy, insurance, telecommunications, and more.

By giving you the power to share your own data and instruct specific actions, the CDR makes it easier to access better deals, smarter tools, and more personalised services. It gives consumers the power to find better products and services with less effort.

Right now, the banking sector is the first and only sector to be designated. There are significant consumer benefits from open banking:

• Sharing your transaction history with a budgeting app to track spending and set savings goals
• Authorising a trusted app to make payments directly from your account
• Comparing mortgage or loan offers by sharing your financial profile

If the electricity sector is designated in the future, this could unlock:

• Sharing your energy usage data to find a cheaper or greener plan
• Using smart home apps to optimise energy consumption
• Enabling automated switching services for the best deal

What’s happening overseas?

Countries like Australia and the United Kingdom have introduced similar frameworks.

• In the United Kingdom, open banking has led to hundreds of new apps for budgeting, payments, and lending.
• In Australia, CDR is expanding beyond banking to energy and non-bank lending.

These examples show that data rights unlock innovation and choice – when strong standards and trust are in place.

Benefits for New Zealand’s economy

The Government expects CDR to:

• Drive competition that benefits consumers
• Support innovation by enabling new products and services to access customer and product data or undertake certain actions
• Improve productivity by reducing friction in switching and service delivery - open banking alone is anticipated to add to national Gross Domestic Product
• Build trust in digital services through strong security and authorisation protections