The Hidden Cost of Building Your Own CDR Infrastructure

For banks, energy providers, and fintechs preparing for the Consumer Data Right (CDR), the build vs. buy decision is a major fork in the road. On paper, building your own CDR infrastructure sounds like a straightforward engineering task. You've got a capable internal team. You’ve built APIs before. Why not handle it in-house? But here's the truth: building your own data holder infrastructure is rarely as cost-effective, scalable, or future-proof as it seems. In this post, we’ll break down the real — and often hidden — costs of building CDR compliance internally, and why more institutions are choosing managed platforms like Fiskil instead.

1. Compliance is Not One-and-Done

CDR compliance is not a checklist you complete once. It’s an evolving set of obligations governed by the ACCC, the OAIC, and the Data Standards Body.

If you build your own solution, you’re committing to:

Continuous monitoring of rule and standard changes
Frequent updates to your API endpoints
Managing version compatibility with the CDR Register
Regular third-party assurance assessments

Each of these comes with ongoing engineering and legal costs. Compliance is now part of your product backlog — permanently.

2. Infrastructure is Just the Beginning

Standing up a compliant data holder platform requires more than just API development. You also need to manage:

Consent flows and dashboards
Dynamic Client Registration (DCR)
Outage reporting to the CDR ecosystem
Robust audit logging
Uptime SLAs and performance monitoring
CDR policy documentation and public-facing portals

These are critical requirements, not nice-to-haves — and building them in-house diverts time from your core product roadmap.

3. The Opportunity Cost is Real

Every day your engineers spend maintaining compliance is a day they’re not shipping customer-facing features or innovating in your core product.

For product-led companies, this is more than a resource issue — it’s a strategic cost.

Do you want to be known as the best at managing API specs and registry updates? Or as the best at delivering value to your customers?

4. You’re on the Hook for Risk

With in-house infrastructure, you carry all the operational risk:

If the registry changes tomorrow, you need to update.
If your consent flow breaks, you could be non-compliant.
If your response times lag, users notice.
If you get audited, you're accountable for every data point.

And with penalties for non-compliance, even a small slip can lead to serious reputational and financial impact.

5. The Cost of Keeping Up

Let’s say your MVP works fine today. What about tomorrow?

The CDR standards are still maturing. New data clusters are being introduced. Energy and non-bank sectors are being added. API specs are versioned and regularly updated.

Maintaining pace with this change isn’t just an engineering task — it’s a dedicated capability.

Fiskil: Compliance Without the Cost Centre

At Fiskil, we’ve built CDR Data Holder infrastructure so you don’t have to.

Our managed platform provides:

Fully compliant, production-ready APIs
Consent management out of the box
Uptime monitoring and reporting
Continuous standards updates — handled for you
Audit-ready logging and security by design

We take on the compliance burden, so your team can focus on what matters — delivering better digital experiences.

Final Thoughts

The cost of building your own CDR infrastructure goes far beyond initial engineering hours. It’s an ongoing investment with hidden risks, resource drain, and long-term complexity.

If you’re looking to meet your obligations quickly, confidently, and without derailing your product roadmap, Fiskil can help.

Talk to our team to see how we can get you compliant in weeks — not quarters.

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Fiskil

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