Contact: Laine Williams, (202) 897-4757, [email protected]
Washington, DC, February 24, 2025 – The Financial Data and Technology Association of North America (FDATA), a trade association representing more than three dozen financial technology and open finance companies in the United States and Canada, today submitted comments in response to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (“CFPB”) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) on the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”).
In the letter, FDATA North America expressed concern that the proposed rule would inappropriately classify consumer-permissioned open finance platforms and financial providers as consumer reporting agencies (“CRAs”), creating consumer confusion and regulatory contradictions with the CFPB’s recently finalized Section 1033 rule. FDATA North America warned that this misclassification could impose unnecessary regulatory burdens, create legal uncertainty, and hinder financial innovation without providing any additional consumer protections.
The submission urged the CFPB to explicitly exclude consumer-permissioned open finance and financial providers platforms governed under the Bureau’s Section 1033 rulemaking from the proposed changes to Regulation V. FDATA North America also highlighted that the NPRM’s expanded definitions of data assembly and de-identified data could inadvertently subject a broad range of financial service providers—including data analytics firms and financial software providers—to CRA regulations, despite their activities not aligning with traditional credit reporting functions or Congress’ intended application of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”).
FDATA North America asserted that the CFPB’s final Section 1033 rule already establishes clear consumer protections and regulatory guidelines for authorized third-party financial data access. Applying the FCRA to consumer-permissioned open finance platforms would introduce conflicting compliance requirements, increase liability risks, and undermine the principles of consumer control and transparency that the CFPB has sought to promote through its open banking framework.
Given these concerns, FDATA North America recommended that the CFPB revise the proposed rule to remove consumer-permissioned open finance platforms and financial providers from its scope. If these revisions cannot be made, we strongly advised rescinding the proposal to prevent disruptions to existing consumer-permissioned data access models.
A full copy of the letter is available here.