FinTech Firms Create Group; Seek Protections for Right to Access Customer Banking Data

A group of financial firms, including digital financial advisers, recently collaborated to form the Consumer Financial Data Rights, or CFDR, which the group said aimed to support consumers’ rights to “unfettered access to their financial data and innovative products and services that improve their financial well-being.” Members of the group include: Affirm, Betterment, Digit, and Envestnet, among others. The group seeks to preserve a key provision of the embattled Dodd-Frank Act that codified consumers’ right to access their personal financial data through technology-powered third-party platforms. According to a press release, CFDR’s first action will be to submit a joint comment letter in response to an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking on Enhanced Cyber Risk Management Standards issued by banking regulators. The letter will encourage the banking regulators to establish a risk hierarchy with regard to cybersecurity risk in the FinTech industry and note the “importance of continuing to allow consumers to access secure tools that enable their financial well-being.”