WASHINGTON The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency plans to issue guidelines as early as this week to help national banks manage the risk associated with account aggregation, Comptroller John D. Hawke Jr. announced Friday.
Consumers use aggregation services to track all of their financial accounts on one Web site. Once operated primarily by nonbanks, more and more aggregation services are being run by regulated financial institutions.
In a speech at an electronic commerce conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Mr. Hawke said the OCC aggregation guidelines will suggest ways for national banks to avoid such business catastrophes as system intrusions and denial of service situations; how they should structure contracts with third-party providers; and how they can develop effective strategies to ensure that their activities in this area comply with all the relevant law, including the privacy provisions of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
Broader online banking which 37% of national banks now provide poses its own risks, Mr. Hawke warned.
The rudiments of good banking practice apply with equal force whether banks operate online or not, he said. I can assure you that our supervision expects no less rigor in minding these fundamentals from those that do.
Specifically, the comptroller said his supervisors are keeping a close eye on how national banks manage electronic security, relationships with third-party technology providers, and international transactions made over the Internet.
