[HN Gopher] CFPB finalizes personal financial data rights rule
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       CFPB finalizes personal financial data rights rule
        
       Author : hn_acker
       Score  : 117 points
       Date   : 2024-10-30 17:55 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
        
       | toomuchtodo wrote:
       | CFPB Announcement: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-
       | us/newsroom/cfpb-final...
       | 
       | Rule:
       | https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_personal-...
        
       | arunabha wrote:
       | And right on cue, wall street fights back! Expected, but still
       | rankles as bit.
       | 
       | 'JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says 'it's time to fight back' on
       | regulation' from
       | https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/jpmorgan-ceo-says-i...
       | 
       | The comment from Dimon is the cherry on top.
       | 
       | 'Dimon said he was not against open banking but noted that it
       | could compromise consumer data and lead to fraudulent money
       | transfers and he was set to fight it.'
       | 
       | His bank is happy to accept fraudulent checks and ACH transfers
       | all day long, but his primary opposition to open banking rules is
       | his overwhelming concern for his customers. Riiiight.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
         | salary depends on his not understanding it."
         | 
         | You have an entire commercial banking industry that has been
         | dependent on being able to capture inexpensive deposits from
         | unsophisticated financial services consumers (they make the
         | spread between the ~0% they offer on demand deposits and what
         | they can lend at), as well as charging exorbitant fees to move
         | value around, and that is all coming to an end with open
         | banking and FedNow instant payments. Sad folks gonna sad.
         | You're a utility, sorry to say.
         | 
         | (obligatory credit union plug here)
        
           | SoftTalker wrote:
           | Credit Unions are typically better, but not always. Fees can
           | still be high and interest rates low. You still have to
           | comparison shop and do some due diligence.
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | Certainly, but they are not profit motivated in the same
             | way a commercial bank is. Do your due diligence.
             | 
             | https://mycreditunion.gov/about-credit-unions/find-join-
             | star...
        
               | wbl wrote:
               | Yeah and S&Ls would never participate in the credit
               | cycle.
        
               | PittleyDunkin wrote:
               | > Certainly, but they are not profit motivated in the
               | same way a commercial bank is. Do your due diligence.
               | 
               | How is profit motivation supposed to help the customers
               | of a bank? On paper this is just as customer-hostile as
               | with any other industry--profit is waste that
               | fundamentally should be going to employees and customers.
        
           | tivert wrote:
           | > "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
           | his salary depends on his not understanding it."
           | 
           | I don't think the issue here is that he doesn't understand. I
           | think the issue is he's lying.
           | 
           | He's almost certainly starting with the policy that he wants
           | for his own self-interest, then working backwards from that
           | to come up with BS arguments for it that sound good. He's not
           | an idiot so almost certainly knows full well what he's doing.
        
         | jfengel wrote:
         | Yeah, it was nice having a Consumer Financial Protection
         | Bureau. It's on the chopping block under Project 2025:
         | 
         | "the next conservative President should order the immediate
         | dissolution of the agency--pull down its prior rules,
         | regulations and guidance"
         | 
         | So don't get too used to your new financial data rights. We'll
         | know Tuesday if you'll ever get a chance to apply them.
        
           | sailfast wrote:
           | The notion that a president can do this unilaterally without
           | Congress is very strange. While I understand the laws and
           | norms around executive authority are often pushed against,
           | you cannot legally defund an entire agency by executive
           | order. (Or create one for that matter - I'm looking at you
           | "Government Efficiency Administration" or whatever the heck
           | they keep talking about.
           | 
           | "Down with bureaucracy!" "Isn't that bureaucracy? A whole
           | organization that focuses on waste?" "Yeah, but it's MINE. I
           | only want down with YOUR bureaucracy."
        
             | jkaplowitz wrote:
             | It's true that an executive order cannot legally defund the
             | CFPB, but since SCOTUS gave the President the right to
             | remove the CFPB Director without cause, the President
             | absolutely can cripple the agency by that type of executive
             | action rather than by defunding it.
        
               | mikeyouse wrote:
               | Even his chosen appointee was a big fan of $1 fines to
               | companies who defrauded customers. One of great
               | 'victories' of the small government types who've been in
               | power is rendering many of the agencies they were
               | responsible for to be completely ineffective. Why fight
               | to protect the CFPB if they're a tool of the companies
               | they're supposed to police? It's extremely important to
               | keep these agencies independent and aggressive in seeking
               | justice/recompensation.
        
               | jshier wrote:
               | Yeah, we saw exactly this across the executive branch the
               | last time this guy was in power. Intentionally corrupt or
               | feckless appointees who blocked or simply failed to
               | approve any action on the part of the agencies they
               | nominally ran. What does it matter if you don't
               | completely dissolve the EPA if you just have your stooge
               | redefine the EPA's job, or what pollution means? Of
               | course, that's been the typical Republican approach for
               | decades. Now they're full mask off for round two and will
               | be working to completely dismantle the administrative
               | state altogether.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | Why do you think the next conservative president would need
             | to do it unilaterally without Congress? There's a good
             | chance that the next conservative president would also have
             | a conservative Congress.
             | 
             | It's not outlandish at all
        
               | sangnoir wrote:
               | They could also flex their newly found immunity when
               | executing "official duties"
        
             | PittleyDunkin wrote:
             | > you cannot legally defund an entire agency by executive
             | order.
             | 
             | Of course you can, if people accept it. This dynamic is
             | massive in the last three decades and is only going to
             | grow.
        
         | mmooss wrote:
         | To add context:
         | 
         | The large banks just destroyed, through intense lobbying, what
         | was called Basel III Endgame - a long-planned, carefully
         | implemented regulatory structure designed to prevent future
         | catastrophes like 2008. The Federal Reserve pretty much openly
         | said they gave into pressure.
         | 
         | The problem with capitulating to make peace is that you don't
         | get peace: The attacker is emboldened and tries for more, and
         | now has precedent and momentum in the eyes of third parties.
        
       | teeray wrote:
       | So does this mean we can finally have APIs for personal financial
       | software without resorting to the ickiness of putting credentials
       | in Plaid?
        
         | ryandrake wrote:
         | Giving a third party your banking credentials is not just icky,
         | it probably violates your online banking terms of service, and
         | is obviously terrible for security. This practice really needs
         | to die yesterday.
        
           | hollerith wrote:
           | Of course it violates the terms of service written by your
           | bank.
           | 
           | Your bank would make it illegal to even talk about your
           | banking transactions with anyone other than your bank if they
           | could.
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | at the same time, the banks are happy they don't have to
             | spend the money to develop those APIs themselves.
        
             | _boffin_ wrote:
             | Actually... not as much as you think. Go read Wells Fargo's
             | policies.
             | 
             | The gist of it: if you give it to someone, that's on you.
        
           | sq_ wrote:
           | I've been happy to see more and more of the banking-related
           | services that I use stop requiring that and give each other
           | actual API access.
           | 
           | I absolutely refuse to hand over my credentials and cannot
           | wait for the practice to die.
        
           | Aspos wrote:
           | The fact that plaid was allowed to exist and grow into a
           | monster tells a lot about incompetence/impotence of the
           | regulators.
        
           | eternityforest wrote:
           | What would actually happen if Plaid or the like was hacked?
           | Would people lose money or would they be able to reverse it
           | all?
        
       | hggigg wrote:
       | Having seen how this shit works behind the scenes I'd rather do
       | it manually.
        
         | buffington wrote:
         | I'd love to hear what you saw that motivated this. Care to
         | share?
        
           | hggigg wrote:
           | Account holder migration between two major international
           | banks. Subcontracted out to the lowest bidding outsourcer who
           | operate some major enterprise messaging bespoke piece of crap
           | bought from IBM which is held together with sticky tape,
           | string and smeared in dog shit and requires hand holding 24/7
           | due to the sheer amount of bugs in it.
           | 
           | I found this out because the company I was contracting for
           | was trying to get the open banking API working against one of
           | the banks and we ended up having to speak to four parties
           | over an simple encoding issue that no one at any org could
           | understand. It was basically the spider man pointing meme.
           | One set of outsourcers blaming another set of outsourcers
           | while their local managers were doing the same. No one even
           | understood or communicated the issues.
           | 
           | When you do something at a bank and it takes longer than
           | expected it's that sort of shit happening.
        
       | AshamedCaptain wrote:
       | ah, you mean there are still more than two banks customer can
       | choose from? and for how long?
        
         | stronglikedan wrote:
         | Unless you have a _very_ narrow use case, there has _always_
         | been a plethora of banks to choose from.
        
           | bob1029 wrote:
           | Banking with a more local institution can make all of the
           | difference in the experience. It would probably blow your
           | mind if you've never done it. Maybe try a mid-size bank that
           | operates in a few states if you are concerned with going too
           | small.
           | 
           | If you are banking with Wells Fargo or BoA, you are getting
           | exactly what you signed up for. A customer base so large that
           | they have no choice but to treat you like a row in a database
           | (i.e., a piece of shit).
        
           | koolba wrote:
           | There's four banks with over $1T in assets, eight with over
           | $500B, nineteen with over $200B, and 29 with over $100B:
           | https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/lbr/current/
           | 
           | I'd argue there's exactly four banks to choose from if you
           | plan on holding more than the FDIC limits at any one bank as
           | I'm not as confident the rest would have an implicit "too-
           | big-to-fail" guarantee.
        
             | barryrandall wrote:
             | Most of those banks' customers would be better off at one
             | of the thousands of credit unions in the US.
        
             | naniwaduni wrote:
             | - If you demand more than an FDIC limit of liquidity in
             | cash, you're not really in the same market for banking
             | services as most natural persons. If the off-the-shelf
             | banking products don't do it for you, you should probably
             | be shopping around and negotiating.
             | 
             | - Private insurance is stil a thing. Banks are like some of
             | the most underwriter-legible institutions known to man.
             | 
             | - Four is a bigger number than two anyway.
        
             | kasey_junk wrote:
             | If you are going to hold more than the fdic limits you
             | should use one of the myriad of products designed for that
             | rather than using hope as a risk management technique.
             | They've been around for decades and are a normal part of
             | any wealth protection strategy.
             | 
             | For better or worse US governmental policy is to encourage
             | myriad amounts of banks, and it's worked given we have more
             | than any other nation by a long stretch.
             | 
             | In fact a lot of the disfunction in our banking system
             | comes from the fact that we have too many banks.
             | 
             | No knowledgeable person thinks Americans lack for choice in
             | banking.
        
       | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
       | I hate that I am so pessimistic, but I will hold my breath until
       | the Supreme Court says why nobody has the authority to tell banks
       | what to do.
        
         | Molitor5901 wrote:
         | Unfortunately it will still come down to the bank wanting to do
         | business with you. I believe at the end of the day, if you
         | don't agree to what the bank wants of you, and from you, they
         | will debank you. There is no right, or even a law, that the
         | bank has to give you an account.
         | 
         | This is a good decision by the CFPB but it's a drop in the
         | bucket.
        
         | jerf wrote:
         | The Supreme Court did not say that no Federal agency can do
         | anything, ever.
         | 
         | You can tell by the way the Federal agencies are still, you
         | know, there. Doing things.
        
       | skybrian wrote:
       | Dismissing fraud as a problem makes it sound like there's no
       | tradeoff here. I think we all know that in real life, fraud
       | actually is a pretty big problem? Though they're self-interested,
       | I expect that banks know it too.
       | 
       | It doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to export your data, but
       | this is a sensitive operation that maybe shouldn't be too easy.
       | People are definitely going to be tricked. The individualistic,
       | libertarian assumption (that customers are responsible adults who
       | know what they're doing) is known to be false by anyone who has
       | worked in a customer support role.
        
         | throwaway48476 wrote:
         | Fraud is only a problem for international transactions. The
         | rest can be handled by lawyers.
        
           | Nifty3929 wrote:
           | At great time and expense, while you have bills to pay and
           | someone else has your money.
        
       | ilaksh wrote:
       | If you don't like what banks do, then learn about the
       | technologies that can replace them today.
        
         | barumrho wrote:
         | Do you mean bitcoin/crypto or did you have something else in
         | mind?
        
           | ilaksh wrote:
           | I think most people don't really know what those things are,
           | or what the fundamental concepts are, so I recommend people
           | research decentralized technologies that are related to money
           | from scratch.
        
       | renewiltord wrote:
       | This seems impossible without Chevron Deference. I doubt one can
       | exercise one's rights under this.
        
       | daft_pink wrote:
       | Does anyone else feel like Apple's app store rules have more
       | teeth than this? Lobbyists have already or will soon be gutting
       | this for sure.
        
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