Data recipients under the federal government’s open banking regime have called on the competition regulator to stop ING Bank cancelling existing customer consents during an upcoming technology upgrade, alleging that this action may be a breach of consumer data right rules.
The government says the CDR is a core policy to lift banking competition. But the proposed action by ING will require customers who have already told the bank to provide their data to an accredited recipient to go through the process again. Users of the data fear some customers will fail to reauthorise the sharing, blocking the competitive services they are seeking to provide.
“Maintaining backwards compatibility is just general good practice in these types of system changes. But this is not the path ING has taken, which sets a very dangerous precedent for CDR as an emerging ecosystem should this planned approach not be stopped immediately,” the joint statement says. “One of the unintended consequences of the platform upgrade is that we will have to bring forward the re-consent of some customers, a step that everyone subscribed to the consumer data right needs to do on an annual basis,” the spokeswoman said. “This update will ultimately enhance the Open Banking experience for [data recipients] and customers with expanded functionality and benefits.”