The Securitization of Financial Identity and the Expansion of the Consumer Credit Industry

Abstract

This article examines the efforts on the part of the retail banking and credit card industry to securitize identity during the period of economic activity that led to the financial crisis. The article examines how, during this period, these industries built an expansive network infrastructure and devoted considerable attention to developing ways of automatically identifying and tracking the individuals who accessed that network. Thanks significantly to this process, “identity” itself has come to be understood as a disembodied aggregate of transaction-generated data, a digital representation of the person constructed over time and space based on the perpetual collection of more data. It also has come tobe understood as something that needs to be secured, through both institutional and individual efforts, using techniques like fraud detection algorithms, vigilant self-monitoring of accounts, the adoption of identity theft protection services, and the integration of biometric technologies into documents and devices. The conceptualization of identity in these terms, with financial data (and the security of that data) at its core, is a fundamental aspect of the reorganization of the U.S. economy around the priorities of financialization. The institutional and individual measures undertaken for the securitization of identity serve the finance industry’s need to define, measure, and differentiate the population in terms of its financial capacities. However, these measures have proven to have limited utility in protecting individuals against the most significant threats to their financial security in a newly financialized, credit-oriented economy.