In a statement submitted for the record in tomorrow’s House Financial Services Committee fintech task force hearing, the American Bankers Association highlighted the importance of protecting consumers when they choose to share their financial data with third parties. ABA offered a set of principles for the responsible sharing of consumer financial data, as well as recommendations to ensure that bank customers have control over how their financial data is shared.
“Today, consumers trust that their financial data are being protected and handled appropriately. This trust is critical to the functioning of the financial system and is the reason banks dedicate significant resources to safeguarding financial data,” ABA said. However, the association noted that current practices in the data aggregation market, such as screen scraping, “may leave consumers exposed and create risks that undermine that trust.”
To help ensure that bank customers have control of how their data is shared, ABA recommended that core providers offer community banks tools to facilitate secure data sharing and that banking regulators should clarify that bank agreements with data aggregators do not constitute third-party vendor relationships. ABA also called on the CFPB specifically to clarify that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act applies to data aggregators, directly supervise data aggregators and clarify liability for unauthorized transactions under Regulation E.
