Banking is getting too complicated

My Credit Union was purchased by a larger credit union earlier this year, and they implemented a hard cutover on November 1st so the old account was no longer valid on that date. To make it a really hard cutover the new account wasn't available until that date as well. As a result, it was impossible to pre-arrange the new account information on all my bills. But enough about their poor transition plans, this is an infosec blog.

I had heard that with the new bank, we would now be able to use Microsoft Money to automatically download account information just as I would do with a credit card account. But after getting my new account information, I didn't see anything about the Microsoft Money access.

I asked the customer service and they replied with the following:

In regards to Microsoft Money, we recently upgraded the security and login procedures for our Online Account Access system. These procedures comply with the new security guidelines recommended by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) at the beginning of 2006. All financial institutions are required to meet these guidelines before the end of 2006.

Quicken and Microsoft Moneys current automatic update interface asks you for a user ID and password to allow them to access your xxxxxxxxxx FCU accounts. According to the FFIEC guidelines, that information alone is no longer sufficient to allow Quicken or Money to gain access to your xxxxxxxxx FCU account information. Our Online Access provider is currently working with Quicken, Microsoft and other providers who include an automatic update feature in their products in a forum called the OFX working group to find a universal solution to this issue.

You may still download your xxxxxxxxx FCU account information into Quicken or Microsoft Money from inside Online Account Access. To do so, click on the "Account Access" tab and click the "export" link.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to let us know.

Very stringent requirements.