Americans are more vigilant than ever. According to Bankrate’s fraud survey, 89% of people took concrete steps last year to protect themselves – updating passwords, enabling two‑factor authentication, monitoring accounts, shredding documents, and avoiding suspicious links. 

And yet, despite this unprecedented level of personal vigilance, 1 in 3 Americans was still scammed in that same 12 month period. Worse, 37% of those victims lost money. 

This is the paradox at the heart of today’s financial ecosystem. 

Consumers are doing more. 
Fraudsters are doing more. 
But the infrastructure inbetween – the systems that govern account access, data sharing, and third‑party connectivity – hasn’t kept pace. 

This is where open banking, open finance, and modern risk management come sharply into focus. 

The real problem isn’t consumer behaviour – it’s systemic exposure 

When 68% of Americans have experienced a financial scam at some point in their lives, it’s not a story about individual responsibility. It’s a story about structural risk. 

Every new fintech app, data aggregator, payment initiator, and financial service provider introduces a new connection point – and with it, a new vulnerability. 

This is the part of the story that rarely makes headlines: most fraud risk now sits in the seams between institutions, aggregators, and third‑party providers. 

That’s why third-party risk is no longer an operational concern. It’s a strategic one – and it’s central to the future of Open Finance Risk Management. 

Open finance needs a new risk model 

Open banking promised secure, permissioned data sharing. Open finance expands that promise – but also expands the attack surface. 

The Bankrate numbers make the case clearly:  

• 1 in 3 Americans were targeted successfully even after taking protective measures 

• Nearly half of previous victims expect to be targeted again 

• Young people (who are more likely to use apps etc) are at least as vulnerable as older ones) 

Fraudsters are exploiting the weakest link in the chain – and it’s rarely the consumer. This is why the next phase of Open Finance requires a more robust, ecosystem‑level approach to third-party risk management. 

What modern Open Finance Risk Management looks like 

To protect consumers and rebuild trust, the ecosystem needs: 

1. Standardised accreditation of third‑party providers – only trusted, verified organisations should be able to gain access to customer accounts and financial data. 

2. Dynamic monitoring of risk indicators – near real‑time detection of anomalies, behavioural risk signals, and suspicious patterns across third‑party connections. 

3. Insurance‑backed warranty model – a tangible safeguard that reduces risk between banks and fintechs, turning assurance into something measurable, not theoretical. 

Consumers can’t solve this alone. 
Banks can’t solve it alone. 
Aggregators can’t solve it alone. 
Fintechs can’t solve it alone. 

But the ecosystem can – with Open Finance Risk Management. 

The takeaway 

When 9 out of 10 people are working hard to protect themselves and 1 in 3 still gets scammed, the conclusion is obvious: 

Fraud is no longer a personal problem. It’s an ecosystem problem. 

And ecosystem problems require ecosystem solutions – ones that identify and exclude bad actors before they can erode trust and confidence.