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Yodlee has added money movement and risk mitigation capabilities to its personal financial management system.
April 4
Personal financial management tools work best when they're
"What we're doing is more than single sign on. People will have all of the information that they need at their fingertips when they're paying bills or looking at their finances," says Kelly West, product manager Central 1. "People will also be able to determine which bills they can pay now or pay later."
Central 1's MemberDirect web and mobile banking platform is used by more than 300 credit unions, banks and other financial services providers in Canada. That platform will be combined with Yodlee's aggregation engine to provide PFM staples such as budgeting, spending analysis and a dashboard view of a consumers' financial relationships.
"It's nice to expand outside of the U.S., and to bring the [model] to a number of smaller institutions," says Joe Polverari, chief marketing and strategy officer at Yodlee, who says historically larger institutions have made greater use of the aggregation engine that drives PFM.
PFM and online banking will appear on the same screen, with financial management tools residing alongside banking functions such as account information, transaction capabilities and bill payment.
"The money management platform is the most important to many consumers, you have to know how much money you have in which accounts when you are going to do a transaction," Polverari says. He says the PFM tools are delivered as applications, which allows the banks and/or Central 1 to customize the sites in terms of function and brand positioning.
Central 1 is offering the PFM tools to banks as a free value add. User fees for PFM will be up to the financial institutions, though Polverari says most institutions offer PFM for free as part of web banking because of the
The two firms will start with a handful of institutions in a pilot scheduled for later this year, with a full rollout to all 300 banks and credit unions in 2013. The incremental rollout will help Central 1 optimize the tools for the small screens of mobile devices; the online and mobile versions of the web/PFM combo are being developed at the same time. "PFM is complex and you have to bring it to a small screen for the mobile version," West says.
PFM penetration among larger banks is already strong, and Central 1 is looking to find a niche among credit unions and smaller banks. Yodlee's own large bank PFM clients include RBC.
A Strands spokesperson says the PFM firm's Canadian clients include Bank of Montreal (BMO), which uses Strands to drive its MoneyLogic product. MoneyLogic lets consumers view, track and manage savings accounts, as well as prepare budgets and set financial goals, all within BMO's online banking system.
Other features include transaction management by spending category, such as auto, home or groceries; progress tracking of savings goals; and budgeting and visual representations in charts and graphs.
Geoff Morgan, a spokesman for Intuit (INTU) in Canada, says Mint is available in Canada through the web and on iPhone and Android devices, and includes all the same features as the American version, except for a tool for setting and tracking progress toward savings goals. Other than some differences due to spelling (e.g. cheque vs. check) and retirement plans (RRSPs and TFSAs instead of 401K), the products mostly look and feel the same.
"Both Canadian and US banks are accessible to Mint users on both sides of the border…so you'll see the big ones, such as TD (TOR) and Scotiabank (BNS), as well as midsize and smaller ones such as Vancity, in your Mint account," Morgan says.
