Thank you for the interest in open banking.
Yes, certainly. Several countries have introduced open banking. For example, the U.K. is now in its second iteration and others are in their third.
With both RTR and open banking, there is not a single country in the world that has introduced them and then removed them, and we take comfort in that. Last spring, the U.K. reported 12 billion pounds saved by individuals and 6 billion pounds saved by businesses thanks to open banking. Last week, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which focuses on protection, proposed a rule to introduce open banking in the U.S.
Canada has unique circumstances, which were communicated by the advisory group. We have been very pleased to participate in the implementation working group, in the actual work into the merits of open banking and important considerations. That work has been done and was conclusive. The last step is the implementation plan, and we have seen a lot of interest from all parties in moving that forward.
When you look at just the FHSA, we had over 14,000 clients on a wait-list before we even had a product in market. We've opened an average of 1,000 FHSAs a day since we put the product on the market, and we're approaching 100,000 accounts.
The reason I mention this is that open banking and RTR will make it easier for consumers to shop around, to figure out if there is a smaller institution that has been able to drill into their unique circumstances—newcomers, renters, gig economy workers—and help de-risk them, because they may not currently fit into a box that gets them a competitive rate for a mortgage, a line of credit or a student loan. There are products all over the world that use open banking to de-risk those clients so that they are offered a more competitive rate.