Financial data aggregation is the process of gathering financial information from multiple sources and compiling it into a single, unified view. This can include data from bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, loans, and other financial products. The goal is to create a holistic picture of an individual’s or organization’s financial situation.
Financial data aggregation is pivotal in modern finance, driving innovations across multiple applications such as:
The importance of data aggregation has grown significantly with the rise of open banking initiatives worldwide. Open banking regulations require banks to share customer data with authorized third parties via application programming interfaces (APIs), enabling a new ecosystem of fintech innovation built on aggregated financial data.
Several companies have emerged to provide financial data aggregation services, including:
These financial aggregators act as intermediaries between financial institutions and the fintech apps and services that consumers use. They handle the complex task of connecting to thousands of data sources and normalizing the data into standardized formats.
There are several key types of financial data that are typically aggregated:
Depending on the use case, aggregators may collect some or all of these data types to provide a comprehensive financial picture.
Financial data aggregation relies on two primary methods to access and collect data:
Once the raw data is collected, it undergoes processes like:
The final step is making the aggregated data available to end users or applications through APIs or other interfaces.
Financial data aggregation provides significant benefits to both consumers and financial service providers:
While the benefits are compelling, financial data aggregation also introduces significant security and privacy risks that must be carefully managed:
Financial institutions in particular have expressed concerns about sharing customer data with third-party aggregators, citing both security and competitive risks. This has led to tensions between banks and fintechs over data access.
To address these challenges, a new wave of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) are emerging to enable more secure and compliant data sharing enabling a truly zero-trust architecture. These technologies aim to unlock the value of data collaboration while preserving privacy and confidentiality.
Some key PETs being applied to financial data aggregation include:
Homomorphic encryption allows computations to be performed on encrypted data without decrypting it. This enables aggregators to analyze and derive insights from financial data while it remains encrypted, reducing the risk of unauthorized access.
Secure multi-party computation (MPC) allows multiple parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs while keeping those inputs private. In the context of financial data aggregation, MPC could enable multiple banks to collaborate on aggregated analytics without revealing customer-level data to each other.
Differential privacy adds statistical noise to datasets or query results to prevent individual records from being identified while still allowing useful insights to be extracted. This can help protect consumer privacy when sharing aggregated financial data.
By taking advantage of these PETs, financial institutions and fintechs can deliver the personalized, data-driven experiences that consumers expect while adhering to regulatory requirements and safeguarding customer trust. This is opening up new possibilities for secure data sharing and collaboration across the financial services industry.
As PETs continue to mature and gain adoption, we can expect to see financial data aggregation evolve in several ways:
Financial institutions that embrace these trends and invest in privacy-enhancing data-sharing capabilities will be well-positioned to thrive in the emerging open finance ecosystem.
Duality Technologies is transforming financial data aggregation by combining cutting-edge privacy-preserving technology with practical, real-world applications. With solutions like homomorphic encryption and secure multi-party computation (MPC), Duality ensures institutions can unlock the full value of their data while maintaining security and compliance.
Through these tools, aggregators can:
Duality doesn’t just help institutions meet regulations like GDPR and CCPA—it helps them innovate securely, build trust with clients and partners, and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving financial ecosystem.
Experience privacy-first collaboration across institutions without exposing sensitive data.