BAC Bank of America Corporation

The top consumer financial regulator is ramping up its efforts to ensure bank customers can freely give their account data to online lenders, financial planners, and other new types of outside services.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau expressed concern that traditional banks have erected improper hurdles to such data-sharing with new companies that could provide useful services. The public inquiry is being launched Thursday amid the growing presence of web-based services that use bank and credit-card account records to offer low-cost mortgage and consumer loans, as well as tax-preparation tools.

"Impeding access to digital financial records not only blocks innovation from new entrants, it also reduces the incentives for financial institutions to innovate," agency Director Richard Cordray was quoted as saying in prepared remarks distributed in advance of scheduled delivery Thursday in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The announcement of the plan to gather comments—generally a prelude to writing rules or guidelines—comes at a sensitive time for the CFPB. Following Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election, Republican lawmakers are ramping up efforts to restrain the CFPB's power by overhauling its structure and challenging its rule-making authority.

On Tuesday, House Republican leaders urged all regulatory agencies not to complete pending rules in the last days of the current administration. The Thursday announcement shows that Mr. Corday has no intent of altering his ambitious agenda because of the election results.

With the latest inquiry, the CFPB is signaling its support for financial-technology companies in their scuffles with banks and credit unions over customer account information.

At issue is whether so-called aggregators, who use a variety of means to tap bank balances, transaction history, and other information to provide services like budgeting or payments to consumers, create security risks or burden bank networks.

That tension was highlighted when The Wall Street Journal reported last fall that several large banks temporarily curtailed the flow of data from customer accounts to websites that help people manage their personal finances, such as Intuit Inc.'s Mint.

The outages, from banks including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp., were motivated by banks' desires to keep data requests from aggregators from overwhelming their servers and to ensure account information was being properly safeguarded.

Financial technology upstarts sounded the alarm, arguing that the banks could use such shutdowns to effectively cut off competing services. The issue has been a hot topic among startups, and it was raised at a White House financial technology summit earlier this year.

Independent of the CFPB's efforts, a number of fintech firms such as Plaid Technologies Inc. and banks are negotiating directly with each other, and jointly through the Center for Financial Services Innovation, on mutually agreeable ways to share data. Some banks have sought to strike data-access deals with individual startups, such as Wells Fargo with accounting-software firm Xero.

During the 90-day comment period, the CFPB will be gathering from the public information about how much flexibility consumers have in sharing their financial records and how securely they can do so.

"Through this inquiry the Bureau is seeking to learn more about consumer access to financial records," said CFPB spokeswoman Moira Vahey. "The information we gather will help us evaluate whether any guidance or other action by the Bureau is appropriate to protect consumers."

Ms. Vahey declined to comment on the new Republican request for suspending introduction of final rules.

Write to Yuka Hayashi at yuka.hayashi@wsj.com and Telis Demos at telis.demos@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 17, 2016 00:45 ET (05:45 GMT)

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