CHATWORTH, Calif. -
Dubbed "Quicken-lite" by some, FinanceWorks "will empower our members to self-service and manage their account balances proactively, plus increase financial and budgeting awareness with relative ease," said Shelley Hawthorne, vice president, automated and remote services at $1.2-billion Premier America CU here. "I believe members with these tools will be smarter consumers."
"The new platform will appeal to a broader range of our members, from the novice online member to the die-hard Quicken and Money user," added Tony Rasmussen, senior vice president, e-services, at Mountain America CU (MACU) in West Jordan, Utah. "Members who use Quicken are only a small niche."
Whereas approximately 12-million households in the country use Quicken, approximately 100-million households forego desktop money-management software, said Paul Rosenfeld, vice president, small business solutions at Digital Insight, which will offer Personal FinanceWorks to its client financial institutions this summer.
"Personal FinanceWorks is not a substitute for Quicken," he said. "FinanceWorks is being created for people who don't use Quicken. They are a very different group of users whose needs are simpler than those who use Quicken, but they want more functionality on their credit union site."
FinanceWorks, a product born from the recent Digital Insight acquisition by Intuit, isn't quite like anything else out there, Rasmussen said.
The "very intuitive" product will deliver some of the same capabilities provided to Quicken users that are absent from most online banking solutions. Members will not only be able to get a snapshot of their multiple online relationships and payees, but of their offline dealings as well, said Rasmussen. Spending can also be organized into customizable categories, he said.
In one tab-based screen, members can consolidate and track past and current card, ACH and check payments from bill pay, auto debit, and biller-direct providers.
Better yet, they can also track pending transactions to forecast an accurate projected balance, according to Rosenfeld.
"This is especially useful when the account is in danger of being negative," said Hawthorn said. "The member will see that date in red and can then make payment or deposit adjustments accordingly."
But the Quicken-ish experience will be enhanced further by something only online banking can deliver: the ability to watch balances grow and shrink in real-time as transactions are posted.
Intuit-which conducted end-user testing with about 10 MACU members-has astutely integrated many traditional small business online banking features into Personal FinanceWorks, continued Rasmussen.
"More and more members want to do ACH transfers or transfer from one financial institution to another, things that were more for small businesses in the past that are now bleeding into the member space," he said. "Intuit has recognized the need for those types of services to blur across traditional lines instead of siloing products according to business or consumer users."
Rasmussen thinks the marriage of Quicken and online banking "could change the way members spend money," he said.
"Personal finance software can tell us what has happened to our money after we've spent it, but if members can go online to get a truer picture of what their real balance is and where their money is going, that will help them better manage their cash flow," said Rasmussen.
"FinanceWorks may help increase the traffic of existing online banking users, plus help bridge them over to adopt Bill Pay," said Hawthorne.
At the $2-billion MACU, "members will see us as a progressive leader in the market," added Rasmussen.
FinanceWorks will most likely be available to MACU members soon after it is released this summer, he said, whereas Premier America members will have access within the next year, said Hawthorne.
FOR MORE RESOURCES
Read more about FinanceWorks and online banking at cujournal.com and search the following bolded terms in the archive:
Digital Insight Launches Small Business Services Solution, for more on Digital Insight's perspective on FinanceWorks.
Digital Insight Takeover Completed, for a story about the Digital Insight acquisition by Intuit. * MortgageClick, www.mortgageclick.biz
'Aggregation' No Longer Buzzword But A Strategy, for a story on credit unions that are using Account Aggregation successfully.
FOR MORE INFO ON THIS STORY
* Mountain America CU, www.macu.org
* Premier America CU, www.premier.org
* Digital Insight, www.digitalinsight.com
