[Long Road Ahead for MyData] Paul Jansen: "Information Must Be Provided According to Life Cycle"

Paul Jansen, Co-founder of Okto and Head of Financial Products

[Asia Economy Reporter Minwoo Lee] As digital-based personal financial information circulates rapidly, the personalized asset management market is entering full swing. Analysts say the key is to analyze and process various information and provide it timely according to the user's life cycle.

Paul Jansen, co-founder of the Dutch information-sharing platform 'OCKTO' and head of financial products, emphasized this in an interview with Asia Economy. Jansen is scheduled to give a lecture titled "MyData and Asset Management" at the Seoul Asia Financial Forum on the 26th, focusing on "MyData for All - Centered on Overseas Success Cases."

Jansen said, "OCKTO aims to become the best solution for distributing necessary information according to the customer's life cycle in the future," adding, "Since people increasingly want to share their information safely and conveniently by themselves, we plan to expand this approach not only in finance but also to other fields."

OCKTO is a kind of data storage, organization, and provision company. It collects various personal information spread across the private and public sectors and distributes it digitally. It acquires data not only on bank account information but also on pensions, taxes, assets and liabilities, income, housing status, and more from government agencies or private companies, then searches and analyzes the data. When users log in to the information-providing institutions using certified authentication, OCKTO searches all related data and presents a summary.

Jansen explained, "In the Netherlands, when applying for a mortgage, an advisor (loan broker) consults with the customer and connects them with banks, during which various documents must be submitted and information verified," adding, "Using OCKTO, this process is fully automated, and customers receive notifications at each stage where information is requested and can decide whether to proceed."

Although it is in the same context as Korea's MyData project, where individuals, not institutions or companies, hold sovereignty over financial information and use it freely, OCKTO is already growing rapidly, unlike Korea's still early-stage market. Jansen emphasized, "All indicators double every year, and the shared data reaches 30,000 cases monthly," adding, "We have built a highly trusted platform by connecting with most major institutions in the Dutch financial market and are preparing to expand to more institutions, companies, and other European countries."

Meanwhile, Jansen also expressed envy toward Korea's still early-stage market, specifically for adopting a standard Application Programming Interface (API). Previously, information displayed on each company or institution's website was scraped one by one. Therefore, even if items like addresses or names changed positions, accuracy could significantly decline. Since customer authentication information had to be stored and managed directly for scraping, there were security concerns about excessive information use. However, these issues were resolved by mandating standard APIs.

Jansen said, "We also collect information by connecting APIs with some institutions like banks, but unfortunately, most European governments do not support APIs," adding, "We actively support the transition to the API method because data minimization is well implemented and sharing is transparent."