Controlling How Your Financial Data Is Shared Could Get a Lot Easier
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Here's your money briefing. I'm J.R. Whalen at The Wall Street Journal in New York. There are all sorts of handy finance apps that help you do things like pay the mortgage and manage your money.
What privacy problem do finance apps create when they access your bank account?
But what happens when you give them direct access to your bank account?
The issue that has emerged as these have grown more popular is that there are not really a lot of parameters around the information they can take.
That's Wall Street Journal investing reporter Justin Baer. He'll discuss a new service that'll let customers decide just how much financial data they want to share. That's next.
Lots of us use apps that link to our bank or brokerage account to pay bills or prepare tax returns or plan for retirement. But those apps also are grabbing lots of personal financial data along the way. And some banks are growing concerned about that. Well, a new service called Akoya is being fast-tracked that'll put customers in charge of their data. Wall Street Journal investing reporter Justin Baer is here with details. So, Justin, Fidelity Investments is the brains behind Akoya. What are they doing with the service?
Sure.
What is Akoya and how does it sit between banks and financial apps?
This is a platform that basically sits between the financial institutions, the banks and brokers that you might have accounts with, and the various applications. So the online apps that, as you said, might help you plan your taxes, plan retirement, create a budget. And historically, those apps are populated by the data that you store inside of your various accounts. And so at some point in that process, when you sign up for those apps, They ask you essentially permission to go to your financial institution and take that data. The issue that has emerged as these have grown more popular is that there are not really a lot of parameters around the information they can take. And if you were to stop using that app, the flow of that data doesn't necessarily stop when you delete that app on your phone.
So, like, if you use TurboTax and you wanted to populate your tax return, you say, go to my Wells Fargo, my Bank of New York account, and grab all the relevant data and bring it in.
And one way to look at it is that you're giving a lot of those apps your login credentials, and they're essentially pretending that they're you in signing on to your bank to take that information. So what this service does is essentially sit in between those two parties and allow... When you get that request from that app to say, hey, we'd like to grab this information, you don't have to give them your log information. It basically sits in a box, and you sign in into that account, and you direct that account and give explicit permission to give the app, whatever it is, a certain kind of information.
And so that is screen scraping?
Yeah, so that's essentially giving your login information to an app. They sign in, and they kind of take whatever they want, even if it necessarily goes beyond the scope of what you want them to have.
So if this all comes to fruition, will customers be able to pick and choose what data the app is able to find?
Yes. So you'll be able to do that. You'll be able to specify which accounts, if you have multiple accounts within each institution.
How does the Akoya flow stop apps from using your login credentials and 'screen scraping'?
And then after you've established that link, you're able to go back to that. And it's basically going to be housed on the website of whatever bank or financial institution you have an account. And so you'll also be able to say, you know what, I no longer use that app, or I don't like it, or I found another one. I want you to shut off access starting now.
And the banks were a little uneasy with this being held by Fidelity before it was to be spun off. And does that spinning off fast track this to possible fruition?
That's certainly Akoya's hope, right? I think they wanted to eliminate what Sub might perceive as a barrier to having people sign up, meaning, wait a second, Fidelity is in its own right this giant financial services company. I, bank A or broker B compete with them in a million different ways. Why do I want them? in this sort of central hub of data.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:05–0:14
2
What privacy problem do finance apps create when they access your bank account?
0:14–1:14
3
What is Akoya and how does it sit between banks and financial apps?
1:14–3:22
4
How does the Akoya flow stop apps from using your login credentials and 'screen scraping'?
3:22–4:51
5
Will customers be able to pick and choose which accounts and data to share?
4:51–6:30
Speakers
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