The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has fined TransUnion and Equifax over $23.2 million for deceptively advertising services; the agencies reportedly advertised credit services costing customers over $200 as free and misled customers about the use of credit reports they obtained; according to the CFPB, TransUnion will pay $13.93 million to consumers and a $3 million fine while Equifax will pay $3.8 million to consumers and a $2.5 million fine. Source
FinTech Sandbox is a non-profit which aims to further financial services by providing both data and infrastructure to fintech startups;...
Lenders are facing some extraordinary times right now as they try to prepare for the months ahead. Underwriting risk has...
The WSJ reports that the hack actually occurred in March instead of May; the breach wasn’t discovered until July 29th and it was announced to the public on September 7th. Source
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[Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Jeff Knott, assistant vice president at Equifax. Equifax is a bronze sponsor and will be...
Challenger bank Masthaven receives £60m investment Postal Banking Is Back — On Democratic Party Platforms — But Is It Viable?...
Equifax announced late yesterday that it has acquired the small business data analytics company Paynet; Paynet provides commercial credit risk...
Following the Equifax hack, Credit Karma is offering a free service that will alert customers if their information has been compromised; the service is currently being tested and will be available sometime in October; the company accelerated the launch due to the large breach at Equifax and has seen a 50% increase in signups following the hack. Source
Capital One recently suffered a data breach resulting from poor security practices that exposed 100 million credit card applications and accounts. They expect the breach to cost the company $150 million. Two years back, Equifax lost 140 million identities, again from poor security practices. At the time, I said that according to GDPR this should cost them $150 million. They have since settled for about $600 million -- though some of that seems to be in-kind services coverage like free credit monitoring (lol!). Separately, Facebook has settled for a $5 billion fine associated with the Cambridge Analytica privacy "breach".
Credit bureaus have had a tough past year with the Equifax breach of customer data and new legislation in the U.S. looking to increase competition by allowing lenders to use different sources; changing the credit bureau system is not as easy as it may sound as they have been intertwined in the financial services system for a long time; lenders still use the bureaus for a large majority of lending decisions, even though some alternative bureaus have seen traction; the breach at Equifax could have a lasting effect because people did have a lot of trust in the company to secure their sensitive information like social security numbers; as data sharing in financial services becomes commonplace a premium will need to be placed on how that data is secured. Source.