Privacy vs. Protection: The Battle Over Consumer Data

California’s newly passed Data Elimination and Limiting Extensive Tracking and Exchange (DELETE) Act, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and similar legislation across 10 other states have brought consumer privacy issues back to the forefront. As public discourse around proposed privacy laws increases, the number of consumers requesting personal data deletion will certainly grow. A prolonged focus on privacy issues also may lead consumers to demand control over their data. When that day comes, financial institutions will likely struggle to maintain the analytics- and data-driven models upon which they rely for customer/member validation and compliance, just to name two.

In the wake of this changing statutory environment around consumer privacy, Javelin’s advice to FIs remains the same: be transparent about the personal data collected about consumers and emphasize how and why personally identifiable information (PII) is used to safeguard and protect consumers and their financial accounts long term.