And this is why this is good for EVERYBODY, EVERYWHERE.

The Open Bank Project (OBP), which I first met in 2010, helps banks to practice REAL openness in banking. Unlike certain similarly named EU proposals, this is a really good idea for a lot of reasons, including that more really open banking would bring less need for wikileaks.

The insurance industry already was a potential source of discrimination and control nightmares before the Internet. Today, coupled with continuous digital tracking, it may become much worst. We cannot mitigate that risk without, among other things, real openness in how insurance data and services are created, exchanged and used.

This is why I am happy, and I think you too should be, about the new partnership between OBP and G2 Startups, a Milan-based “Open Innovation Enabler and a Startup Accelerator”. G2 Startups leads the Italian chapter of the Open Insurance Initiative (OPIN), which, by a first look at their White Paper, seems to me a promising answer to the concerns I just expressed.

Quoting from the press release, the partnership should use OBP technology to power the Open Insurance API Playground, where developers will collaborate, experiment and test the effectiveness of standardised Open Insurance APIs. The results of this work would include:

• establishing standards for Open Insurance APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) in Italy
• kickstarting innovation [and] services based on Open Insurance data… “in the Italian and hopefully international insurance sectors”

If you ask me, this may be one of the most important playgrounds in the next months and years, as far as human and consumer rights and concerned. Let’s follow its development, and propose similar partnership in EVERY country.