Contact: Laine Williams, (202) 897-4757, lwilliams@allonadvocacy.com
Washington, DC, July 7, 2025 – The Financial Data and Technology Association (FDATA), a trade association representing more than 30 financial technology companies and consumer-permissioned data access platforms in Canada and the United States, today submitted an amicus brief in Forcht Bank NA vs. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), urging the court to uphold and require enforcement of the CFPB’s final rule implementing Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act). Originally initiated under former Trump-appointed CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger and developed through engagement across four presidential administrations, the final Section 1033 rule has received consistent bipartisan support as a critical step toward modernizing financial data access in the United States.
FDATA’s brief defended consumers’ right to share their financial data with financial technology tools that support their financial wellbeing—tools that depend on secure, permissioned access to their personal financial data. In the brief, FDATA emphasized that Section 1033 has long been accepted as a foundational pillar of open banking in the U.S., intended to give consumers—not financial institutions—control over how their financial data is accessed and shared.
As noted in the brief, by 2010—when Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act—a large number of U.S. consumers were already using digital financial tools to manage their financial wellbeing, underscoring that Section 1033 was not about establishing direct consumer access to account information, but about empowering consumers to permission third parties to securely use their data on their behalf. This intent has been widely acknowledged across the financial ecosystem for years, including by the Bank Policy Institute (BPI), a plaintiff in the case, which acknowledged in its 2023 comment letter to the CFPB that consumer-permissioned data sharing with third parties has “generally benefited consumers.
“The law is clear. Congressional enactment of Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act was clearly and unambiguously intended to provide consumers with the ability to leverage financial technology tools to manage and improve their financial wellbeing,” said Steve Boms, Executive Director of FDATA.
FDATA’s brief reinforced the statutory and policy rationale for ensuring that authorized third parties—acting with consumer consent—fall squarely within the scope of the CFPB’s Section 1033 rule. The brief emphasized that third-party data access is not only consistent with the plain language of the statute but is also central to achieving Congress’s vision of a competitive, consumer-driven financial ecosystem. In addition to defending the legal interpretation of a “consumer,” FDATA’s filing also defended the rule’s inclusion of payment initiation data and warned that vacating the rule would undermine innovation, weaken consumer choice, and entrench the market power of incumbent financial institutions—outcomes squarely at odds with the purpose of the Dodd-Frank Act.
The brief urged the court to uphold the CFPB’s final rule and require its full enforcement by the CFPB to ensure consumers can continue to access and benefit from digital financial tools. Should the rule be upheld, FDATA and its members stand ready to work collaboratively with the CFPB to further strengthen and refine its implementation to continue to provide for an innovative and competitive open banking framework in the United States.
A full copy of the amicus brief is available here.