Banks are mortified of losing contact with their customers as a rash of start-ups develop apps that aggregate data from our financial lives to help us manage our financial lives better.

Now this from the Wall Street Journal:

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. are snarling the flow of data to popular websites that help consumers manage their finances, according to people familiar with the matter.

Banks, facing increasing competition from these companies, are becoming more protective of their customer information and are limiting how much data they pass on. The moves also reflect growing concern within the banking industry that rising use of such sites will overload bank servers, on top of worries that customer data could potentially be vulnerable to hackers.

My question for the banks is why they don’t improve their user interfaces and data structures to reduce the need for these new mobile apps. Why do our credit card statements still look like they are from the 1990s with so little information about the merchandise that we are purchasing?  It also raises the question of who owns the data? The customer or the financial institution?  Expect this battle to continue to play out in the years ahead….

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.

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