Equifax

Readers comment on the ripple effects of the Equifax breach, who benefits from the CFPB's final arbitration rule, gender-related issues in financial services, and more.

Equifax's data breach may be the most serious, given that it covered 143 million consumers and involved reams of confidential information, but it wasn't the largest. Following are the biggest to date.

Not only will banks be on the hook for counterfeit loans to identity thieves, but they will likely lose loan volume, and ultimately revenue, from changes in consumer behavior.

Yes, the credit bureau goofed badly on data security, and it proved to be worse at crisis management. But other companies have been just as sloppy with cyber defenses, and business and government leaders should have tackled these problems long before now.

Equifax will debut a new service that will permanently give consumers the ability to lock and unlock their credit for free.

Regulators disagree whether proposed changes to capital requirements would ease burden on community banks; JPMorgan on hook if jury award not overturned.

Amid a series of breaches, banks and payment services companies would be far better served by building solutions and programs that work toward instilling consumer confidence, instead of creating situations that continually erode trust, writes Madeline Aufseeser, CEO of Tender Armor.

It’s not just consumers who are worried about identity theft. For the millions of business owners who rely on their personal credit to finance operations, damage to credit scores could have dire consequences.

The identity theft threat created by the Equifax hack and the growth of online lending have given software makers a platform to pitch products that rely on selfies, scans of driver’s licenses and other nontraditional ID methods.

The embattled Smith may lose severance benefits, depending on firm’s probe into data breach; Clayton grilled about why the agency took so long to act after Edgar hack.

As Equifax sheds its top execs, more experts are casting attention on the business practice of charging consumers for monitoring their personal data at bureaus that otherwise give them little control over their financial identities.

Equifax observed an increasingly well-worn ritual of scandal-ridden firms by jettisoning CEO Richard Smith: apologize, promise to do better in the future, and sacrifice your top executive in the hopes it will ward off action by Congress and regulators.

Inevitably, Equifax’s CEO Richard Smith has left his post. For the credit bureau's sake, let's hope it has a long-term plan that's better than promoting from within.

The accounting firm says only a "very few" clients were affected by the cyberattack; former CEO Mike Cagney's wife, the lender's chief tech officer, is leaving.

The auditing and consulting firm said Monday that it’s currently informing the clients affected and has notified governmental authorities after it became aware of the incident.

Ironically, the credit bureau’s rise was built on promise to safeguard customers’ most sensitive information; bank to build global ops center in Warsaw.

A year ago, then-Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf testified before two committees. It went so poorly Stumpf later resigned, and the bank is still struggling to repair the damage. Here's how Equifax CEO Richard Smith can avoid the same fate.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is broadening her probe into the data breach to look at whether the company should have disclosed the breach sooner and if it plans to claw back compensation.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council meets Friday to discuss removing the label from the now shrunken insurer; Senate Banking Committee to hear Richard Smith on October 4.

Democrats have strived to paint recent scandals at Wells Fargo and Equifax as prime examples of why a regulatory rule banning mandatory arbitration agreements should be upheld, but Republicans are not wavering in their campaign to overturn it.