Senate Banking Chair Asks CFPB How It Plans to Address Risks of Chime and Other Banking Apps – By Carson Kessler (ProPublica) / July 27 2021
Citing a ProPublica report on the high numbers of complaints about involuntary Chime account closures and other problems, Sherrod Brown asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to lay out a plan for overseeing neobanks.
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The chair of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee is calling for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to evaluate the risks associated with apps that provide banking services, citing ProPublica’s article on Chime, the most widely downloaded of those apps.
In a letter sent today, Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, wrote to the CFPB’s acting director, Dave Uejio, stating that “Chime’s abrupt, involuntary closures of its customers’ accounts” call for further “insight into the risks posed by nonbanks to consumers as well as the measures the Bureau is taking to address the risks by nonbank fintech companies and their affiliated banks.”
The letter asserted that “Chime’s account closures may increase the number of people in this country who do not have access to the financial services” they need. Being shut out of a banking app, the letter noted, “can cause lasting damage” to a person’s financial condition.
