The Consumer Data Right (CDR) is Australia’s national data portability initiative. It gives individuals and businesses the ability to share their data with trusted and accredited third parties, along with limited types of data with non‐accredited parties. In turn, these third parties can use this data to provide products, services and insights that benefit consumers. This includes, for example, providing a single view of a consumer’s financial position, lending product comparisons or, in the future, faster loan applications and easy switching between different products and service providers. The CDR is a significant reform in terms of ambition, technical complexity and potential for consumer benefits. It is being implemented on a sector‐by‐sector basis, with the intention to ultimately achieve an economy‐ wide coverage.

The CDR is now in its third year of implementation, with data holders in open banking covering over 99 per cent of banking customers able to share data. The CDR is expanding across the economy. The CDR will enable energy consumer data sharing later this year, the telecommunications sector has been designated, and Open Finance has been identified as the next priority area for expansion.

The focus to date has been on building the ecosystem, developing new regulatory settings, including rules and standards, and building compliant systems. Innovative product offerings are only starting to become available, meaning significant consumer benefits are yet to be realised. As the system moves from the establishment and build phase, participant, government and regulatory focus is shifting to greater consideration of system functionality and growth. While this has meant significant industry and government investment in the CDR, the Review has heard that participants in the CDR are still waiting for the scheme to deliver broad and tangible benefits to consumers, as well as to system participants – including data holders and data recipients.

The report is made up of four parts:

• Part One provides analysis of issues relating to the CDR statutory framework
• Part Two reflects on the implementation of the statutory framework to date
• Part Three provides an overview of the how the CDR can develop into the future, and
• Part Four acknowledges other issues raised in submissions.