Together with 11 of the nation’s largest banks, the Clearing House and Fidelity Investments today announced a new data-sharing network intended to give consumers greater control over how their financial data is shared with third-party providers. The network will be operated by Akoya, a company previously owned by Fidelity, which has been spun off as an independent entity and is now owned jointly by those organizations. Access to the network will be open to the entire financial industry, including banks of all sizes.
Akoya’s secure application programming interface-based network effectively acts as a bridge between financial institutions and third-party data recipients, allowing data to be transferred in a safer, more transparent way than current methods like screen-scraping, which require third parties to retain bank customers’ login credentials to display account information.
“This is a major step forward in giving consumers control of their data and allowing them to share that data securely with third-party applications they want to use,” said Michael Corbat, CEO of Citigroup and chairman of the Clearing House. “Data security is a top priority for the industry, and bringing Akoya together with The Clearing House and its members will meaningfully advance the availability of a secure data sharing ecosystem while preserving customer choice.”
