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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
Business
Holly Williams & Lottie Gibbons

HSBC warning over 'incorrect' fees, charges and rates

HSBC has admitted providing incorrect information on fees, charges and rates under its open banking agreement.

The high street lender has been given a warning by a competition watchdog after uncovering breaches of its responsibilities under open banking - which allows third-party financial service providers open access to consumer banking, transaction, and other financial data from lenders - on more than 50 different occasions over the past five years.

Its failure to report accurate information - and in some cases not providing the required information - risked leading customers to make the wrong decisions by leaving them potentially with an incorrect or incomplete understanding of products.

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HSBC self-reported the breaches in June last year and has since taken action to address them. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it follows previous open banking data breaches by the bank.

In a letter to HSBC's retail banking arm, the regulator said: "This context makes the breaches ... especially disappointing." It said it would not be taking official enforcement action given HSBC's moves to "put things right", but stressed it will monitor HSBC's compliance "closely".

Since open banking was launched in 2017, the UK's biggest banks have agreed to make their data more available in a more standardised format - seen as a big step forward to allow more so-called challenger banks to enter the market and allowing customers to shop the market better.

Open banking uses data which companies hold about people to help them find better deals, based on that individual's actual behaviour, for example people can find a better bank account based on how often they are actually overdrawn or in credit.

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