Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals
1–10 of 108 posts
Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals
#2This is the major difference between the US and EU. In the EU this isn't the "bank's customer data" this is the "customer's data." The customer actually has a legal right to see what data is held about them by the bank, and the bank has a legal obligation to make sure that data is accurate and up to date.
Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals
#3If the banks cared they would provide either token-based API like oAuth or at the very least, a read-only password for users to give these sites that aren't fully credentialed.
Customers will always want to extract their data.
Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals
#4This seems like it would backfire. I suspect many people are more loyal to mint.com than to their banks.
Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals
#5This is the major difference between the US and EU. In the EU this isn't the "bank's customer data" this is the "customer's data." The customer actually has a legal right to see what data is held about them by the bank, and the bank has a legal obligation to make sure that data is accurate and up to date.
> the bank has a legal right to make sure that data is accurate and up to date
Sorry to nitpick, but the bank has a legal obligation, not right - they don't have a choice other than to make sure data is correct
Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals
#6This is the major difference between the US and EU. In the EU this isn't the "bank's customer data" this is the "customer's data." The customer actually has a legal right to see what data is held about them by the bank, and the bank has a legal obligation to make sure that data is accurate and up to date.
In the US they also have a fiduciary requirement to protect your money to the best of their ability. I appreciate that some of the larger banks might actually consider the impact of a data breach at an aggregator but reading this a couple of times it really sounds like a whine that they feel they have to provision more capacity for both their user base + the load put on by the aggregators their user base is using. They don't have a way to charge the aggregator for their use like they do the customer.
If the latter is the real reason they are whining then I expect they will push for a fee than can charge people who access their account through an aggregator much like they charge people who access their account through Quickbooks.
Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals
#7This seems like it would backfire. I suspect many people are more loyal to mint.com than to their banks.
Switching banks isn't easy, unfortunately. Note how banks have very successfully managed to create systems that do not have bank account number portability built in, they even engineered them in such a way that any future desire to implement such portability will meet with very substantial technical roadblocks.
Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals
#8This is the major difference between the US and EU. In the EU this isn't the "bank's customer data" this is the "customer's data." The customer actually has a legal right to see what data is held about them by the bank, and the bank has a legal obligation to make sure that data is accurate and up to date.
In the US they also have a fiduciary requirement to protect your money to the best of their ability. I appreciate that some of the larger banks might actually consider the impact of a data breach at an aggregator but reading this a couple of times it really sounds like a whine that they feel they have to provision more capacity for both their user base + the load put on by the aggregators their user base is using. Th…
I'd just change banks though. Its trivial when you only have a few bills that need ACH/EDI, and the rest of your payments are on auto-pay on a credit card (which you pay from your checking account). BankSimple (now Simple) let me down so many times during their tech upgrade, I simply moved over to Fidelity for my checking account needs. It took ~15 minutes to change my direct deposit online with my employer, and re-create my bill pay setup.
As a bank, you are a commodity. You simply store the bits that say how many resources I can consume over a moving window of time.
Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals
#9This seems like it would backfire. I suspect many people are more loyal to mint.com than to their banks.
Switching banks isn't easy, unfortunately. Note how banks have very successfully managed to create systems that do not have bank account number portability built in, they even engineered them in such a way that any future desire to implement such portability will meet with very substantial technical roadblocks.
Why not? I've ditched banks a few times. Checking is a commodity product these days... it's not like a banking relationship matters anymore.
In olden times, it might have been a pain. Now most automatic payments hit a credit card, so you aggregate the account changes at that level.
Last time I flipped to get a 1/4 point off my mortgage. I think I had to redirect my utility account and change a few online payment portals for AMEX, etc. Took about 30 minutes, and saved me about $20k over the life of the mortgage.
Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals
#10This seems like it would backfire. I suspect many people are more loyal to mint.com than to their banks.
Switching banks isn't easy, unfortunately. Note how banks have very successfully managed to create systems that do not have bank account number portability built in, they even engineered them in such a way that any future desire to implement such portability will meet with very substantial technical roadblocks.
I think the biggest issue with switching banks is that that lowers the average age of your accounts, which affects your credit score.