Complaint Review: Chex Systems Paul Walsh CEO - Woodbury Minnesota

Did you know that more than 95 percent of commercial banks and credit unions in the United States use ChexSystems to screen applicants for checking and savings accounts?  ChexSystems stores millions of  names of consumers whose bank accounts had been closed "for cause".  Services include verification of identity, reports on account history, and transaction monitoring.   

This is what happened to me: The problem is that financial institutions are rejecting applications for bank products and saying that ChexSystems gave them information that they used to decline the applications.  ChexSystems is lying.  I did in fact ask for my credit report rating.  Why is ChexSystems even involved in credit reporting ratings? Their work is with banking not credit cards. 

The company should be investigated for its credit report rating system that does not allow the public to dispute the secret information used to come up with that score.  It should have to follow the same federal laws that Equifax, Experian and TransUnion follow as far as being transparent and having to interact in a transparent way with the public.  ChexSystems is a very powerful company that can blacklist someone from doing banking in the United States.  When a person is "unbanked," usually ChexSystems is responsible for the reports that over 95% of banks use to determine client risk.  

The problem I was having with ChexSystems is a grey area in consumer reporting: Banks can say that ChexSystems gave them a secret credit reporting number and ChexSystems can deny that.  What is the consumer supposed to do when that happens?  The banks can also withhold any comprehensive information about why the consumer application was denied.  Like I said above, the big three credit reporting agencies are not allowed to do this, why is ChexSystems?  ChexSystems plays games with consumer information.  It is owned by a transnational, global corporation that is compiling personal financial information on citizens from many countries. 

Currently, the Chinese government uses this kind of information for a "social score" which is given to each Chinese citizen and used to determine whether or not they can bank, travel, what school they can go to -- I'm sure you've read articles on the subject.   ChexSystems is part of a global network of faceless corporations that are using American customer information for what purpose?  Why is there no adequate federal oversight of ChexSystems and its parent company? 

It takes two minutes on Wikipedia to verify all of this.  The Minnesota AG's office is uniquely positioned to investigate and expose Minnesota-based ChexSystems for selling personal information through its global parent company and blacklisting lower income Americans who are on their secret blacklist that consumers can't get at and correct for negative and false information.  There is no roadmap for the American consumer who gets blacklisted by ChexSystems to correct their financial reputation.  But federal consumer protection law requires that all data collecting companies like ChexSystems provide an easy-to-access way to dispute all information retained by those companies.  

Americans in the millions who are unbanked instead turn to predatory lenders because they can't get regular bank accounts.  If you look closely at who those people are...they are people of color and your office should be interested in digging deeper to see if there is any systemic, institutional racism being used to "grade" American consumers for this secret banking score.   I wish someone would do something about this company to make it compliant with federal consumer protection laws.

ChexSystems uses snail mail for correspondence but is part of a 21st century, global operation that uses high tech software and surveillance.  It is not transparent, it is not consumer friendly and it is not up-to-date.  I think it's time for ChexSystems to update its consumer interaction so that consumers can log in on their own on their website and fix any mistaken information.  It should have consumer online login dashboards for any consumer who wants private access to their own information.