OT -- 90-day limits in the financial world for downloading your data.

[Greg Rundlett]

Fred wrote:

>On Sat, 2004-11-20 at 12:17, Bill Mullen wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I suspect that the real issue here is merely one of storage space; by
>>setting a fixed period for which they will make data available (last 90
>>days, last 3 statement periods, whatever), they can move enough
>>transactions out of the database to keep up with the new transactions
>>being added, all while keeping their online storage capacity fairly
>>static and predictable.
>>    
>>
>
>It's not that even -- online, a full 18 months of data is available; I
>am only allowed to access it 90 days at a time. The 90-day window can be
>*anywhere* in the total dataset; I just can't pull more than a 90-day
>chunk of it at any given time.
>  
>
The bank considers the data /their/ data, and is loathe to give you too 
much of it.  If you could download all of it, it would make it too easy 
for you to export the data to another financial institution or 
self-manage your money.  They don't want to lose the customer, or lessen 
the customers dependency on the bank's system(s).  They'll let you have 
answers to specific balance and transaction questions (after all there 
is a lot of cost-savings in this type of self-service), up to the point 
of asking for 3 months worth of history at a time.  But the second you 
ask a question like "Can I have all my account history?", financial 
service companies only think about risk.  E.g. Where are you 
transferring your account to?  or, Is there a problem? (Are you thinking 
of suing us?) 

The other thing about historical data is that once you have it, it 
becomes easier to do a performance analysis.  This is another taboo for 
financial services companies.  The only performance numbers they want 
you to see are controlled numbers that they put out.  One example of 
this is when a money management firm is doing poorly, they will quote 
the market performance in statement stuffers.