President Joe Biden will sign a sweeping executive order today designed to promote competition in the U.S. While the order primarily targets Big Tech and health care, it also calls for changes in banking and other large economic sectors.

Biden’s executive order calls for banks to allow customers to take financial transaction data with them to a competitor, a move that will “make it easier and cheaper to switch banks,” according to the executive order.
The order also takes aim at mergers in general, including banking. It urges the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to update guidelines on banking mergers to “provide more robust scrutiny of mergers.”
Many bank closures in the past two decades were due to mergers and acquisitions, the administration adds.
“Over the past two decades, the United States has lost 70% of the banks it once had, with around 10,000 bank closures,” the action states. “Communities of color are disproportionately affected, with 25% of all rural closures in majority-minority census tracts.”
Even though such deals are subject to federal review, the federal agencies have not formally denied a bank merger application in more than 15 years, the order notes.
In total, the executive order includes 72 initiatives to be enacted by more than a dozen federal agencies.
Biden’s order also calls on the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to “vigorously” enforce antitrust laws and challenge prior “bad mergers that past Administrations did not previously challenge.” It states enforcement should focus on labor markets, agricultural markets, health care markets and the tech sector.
The executive order establishes a White House Competition Council, led by the director of the National Economic Council, to oversee progress on the executive order and to monitor the “rising power of large corporations in the economy.”
Also, the administration will seek to ban or limit noncompete agreements. That may impact banks and fintechs, which already struggle to retain employees with high-tech skills.
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