Reconnect a Bank

Why bank connections degrade in Forbidden Finance and how to re-authenticate to restore automatic syncing.

Overview

Sometimes a bank connection stops working and needs to be re-authenticated. This is called a "degraded" connection, and it happens for normal reasons like changing your bank password, your bank requiring periodic re-verification, or an expired authentication session. When a connection degrades, Forbidden Finance shows a banner on your dashboard and stops syncing until you re-authenticate. Your existing transaction data is preserved -- you just need to log in again to resume syncing.

Why Connections Degrade

Bank connections can degrade for several reasons:

Reason	What Happened
Password changed	You changed your bank password, so the existing authentication is no longer valid
Bank MFA update	Your bank added or changed its multi-factor authentication requirements
Expired session	Your bank's authentication session expired (some banks require periodic re-verification)
Bank maintenance	Your bank performed system updates that invalidated existing connections
Security lockout	Too many failed sync attempts caused the bank to lock the connection

Degraded connections are not a sign that something is wrong with Forbidden Finance. They are a normal part of maintaining secure bank connections, and re-authenticating typically takes less than a minute.

How to Recognize a Degraded Connection

When a connection degrades, you see:

A banner on your dashboard that says something like "Your connection to [Bank Name] needs attention"
A warning icon next to the affected account in your Accounts list
The account's sync status shows "Needs re-authentication" instead of a last-synced timestamp

Your existing transactions and balance history remain intact. Only new syncing is paused until you reconnect.

How to Re-Authenticate

Tap the reconnect banner or warning

On your dashboard, tap the degraded connection banner. Or go to Accounts, find the affected account, and tap the warning icon.

Start the reconnection flow

Tap Reconnect or Re-authenticate. This opens the secure bank login interface (the same one you used when you first connected).

Enter your current bank credentials. If your bank requires MFA (like a text message code or authenticator app), complete that step as well.

Confirm the connection

After successful authentication, the connection status returns to active. Forbidden Finance immediately begins syncing any transactions that occurred while the connection was degraded.

What Happens During the Gap

While a connection is degraded, no new transactions are synced. Once you re-authenticate:

Missed transactions are backfilled. Forbidden Finance pulls in all transactions that occurred during the disconnection period, so you do not lose any data.
Balances update immediately. Your account balance jumps to the current value from your bank.
Budget calculations catch up. Any backfilled transactions are categorized and count toward your budget for their respective dates.

When Re-Authentication Will Not Fix It

In rare cases, re-authenticating may not resolve the issue:

Bank is temporarily down. If your bank is experiencing an outage, the reconnection flow may fail. Try again in a few hours.
Account closed at the bank. If you closed the account at your bank, the connection cannot be restored. You can remove the connection from Forbidden Finance.
Bank changed providers. Some banks occasionally change their data-sharing infrastructure. If reconnection keeps failing after multiple attempts over several days, contact us at support@403fin.io.

Tips

Re-authenticate as soon as you see the banner. The longer a connection stays degraded, the more transactions need to be backfilled when you reconnect.

After changing your bank password, proactively reconnect in Forbidden Finance before waiting for the degraded connection banner to appear.

Do not delete and recreate a connection to fix a degraded status. Deleting removes the connection's history. Instead, use the re-authenticate flow to resume syncing with all your data intact.