Come together: View all of your
financial records on one Web page
By Holden Lewis • Bankrate.com

Larry Pace was born to Yodlee.

The Louisianan's personal information resided on a constellation of Web sites. One site held his plane and hotel reservations. He got his e-mail from a variety of places. He had accounts at two online banks and at a brokerage. He kept appointments and to-do lists on a Web site. He tracked his frequent-flier miles online.

All at different sites.

He had a routine in which he would surf from one site to the next, gathering information like a child hunting Easter eggs in a garden. He resigned himself to the inconvenience because there wasn't a technological fix.

It was kind of like the way Americans in days of yore accepted the inconvenience of missing The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights when they weren't home. A technical solution -- the VCR -- solved the latter problem. Likewise, Yodlee's technology partly solved Pace's.

It allows him to log onto one Web site, enter one username and password and monitor information from several sites, each of which has its own username and password. Yodlee's Web site tracks Pace's travel reservations, appointments, e-mail and frequent flier miles. To his disappointment, while the service tracks accounts at dozens of banks, it doesn't track his two online bank accounts, but he hopes someday it will.

Technically it's "account aggregation"
Yodlee and its competitors Corillian, eBalance^* and VerticalOne have created a new breed of service that grabs information from various Web sites and presents it on one page for the user's convenience. Known dauntingly in the biz as "account aggregators," these companies vary in the breadth and depth of their offerings. What they have in common is the ability to gather the current balances of bank and brokerage accounts and display them on one page.

Says Yodlee spokeswoman Melanie Flanigan: "We hear from people that their problem is having a different name and maybe a slightly different password for each account."

With Yodlee holding the electronic keychain of usernames and passwords, customers find it easier to mind their finances.

"This is something that can touch a lot of people and truly make their lives easier," Flanigan says.

What account aggregators do is a step beyond what customizers such as MyYahoo do. Customizers give you access to an e-mail account, headlines on subjects of interest, sports scores, TV listings and so on. "What we offer is true personalization," a Yodlee executive says.

A main drawback is that each aggregator can draw information from a limited (but growing) list of financial institutions. To users' annoyance, none of the aggregators lets you know if your bank is on the list until you're well into the laborious signing up process.

It would help if they let you know in advance. But if they did, you might be less likely to sign up. On the other hand, users might flock to the first site that publishes a user-friendly list of the banks that it draws information from.

Meet the players
If you use an aggregation service, you might not know which company is behind it. They mostly work behind the scenes of another company's Web site. To list three examples, you can sign up for Yodlee services through Alta Vista, eBalance will soon be available through Bankrate.com, and you can get to VerticalOne through OnMoney.com.

For the sake of example, let's say you sign up for eBalance through Bankrate.com, the Web site that publishes this article. When you log on, you'll go to Bankrate.com to check your financial status. eBalance provides the technology and Bankrate.com furnishes the forum.

All of the aggregators say they have strong security and privacy standards and that they know their credibility and business survival depends on protecting individuals' data. They collect and sell information about groups of users, but not about individuals.

Except for Corillian, the aggregators make most of their money by sharing advertising revenue with their partner sites. They're all free to consumers.

Corillian
Corillian's service exists completely behind the scenes. The company makes most of its money selling software to banks that let them offer online banking and bill paying. It sells another piece of software that aggregates accounts.

This allows you to go to your bank's Web site and check your balances at other financial institutions. The software can track credit card, checking, savings and brokerage account data.

"The average American has relationships with five financial institutions," says Corillian's chief marketing officer, Matt Cone. "You can maintain all these separate ties but have all the information together in one place."

An advantage of Corillian's service is that it's offered on banking and financial sites, which is where a lot of people would prefer to track their money. A disadvantage (to some people) is that it gathers only financial information and not unrelated things such as e-mail and auction tracking.

The first Web site to roll out Corillian's service will be Microsoft MoneyCentral. That's ironic, because it's not a bank. The service will also be offered at the sites of First Tech Credit Union and Hibernia Bank, and the company is negotiating with other financial institutions.

eBalance
eBalance offers a rather narrow, but deep, service that grabs transaction information from bank and brokerage Web sites, categorizes the transactions and sorts them into a register like the one in your checkbook. It works kind of like Quicken or Microsoft Money, except you don't have to type in as much information because some of it is entered automatically.

"eBalance gets the consumer away from that data input process," president and CEO Myles Suer says. "Not only are we easier, but we're free."

eBalance lets you view each transaction going back as far as seven years. Its competitors allow you to see only the current balance and sometimes the last few transactions.

Like Microsoft Money and Quicken, eBalance lets users sort their information in myriad ways to calculate net worth, determine how much was spent last month on meals and entertainment, separate business expenses from personal expenses, and so on.

The company plans to add the ability to track frequent-flier mileage. It is looking into adding online bill paying. "Clearly, once you have a checkbook, the advantages of (electronic) bill paying will be significant," Suer says.

The advantages are the depth and detail of financial information, and the ability to analyze and plan your financial life. Disadvantages are that the service is strictly financial (again, no e-mail or auction tracking) and can be as complex (and powerful) as Quicken and Money.

eBalance will be offered soon at Bankrate.com and is available now at NewsAlert and Dollar Stretcher.

VerticalOne
VerticalOne has a broader offering than the above two companies. Using this company's technology, you can set up a Web page that includes checking, savings and credit card accounts, investment portfolios, e-mail, frequent flier mileage and electronically delivered bills.

You can view some past transactions. And for bills that are delivered electronically instead of by snail mail, you can click on the bill when it shows up on the VerticalOne screen and be whisked to the biller's Web site, where you can pay it.

The advantage is that the service is broad and accessible at a lot of Web sites. A disadvantage is that it lacks sophisticated financial planning tools.

VerticalOne service is available on numerous Web sites, including CNBC.com, AnyDay.com, iVillage.com, Go.com, OnMoney.com, wfn.com, MyWay.com, MoneyPark.com and Cox Interactive online newspapers in Atlanta, Austin, New Orleans, Oakland and other cities.

Yodlee
Yodlee has the broadest offering. With Yodlee, you can keep track of checking, savings and credit card balances, investments, 401(k) accounts, bills, travel reservations, mileage programs, shopping promotions, e-mail, customized news and the status of auction bids.

The company has software called Yodlee2Go that enables users to track these accounts not only on the Web, but on Palm OS^TM devices such as the Palm III^TM, Palm V^TM and Handspring Visor, as well as on Palm-Size PC devices. Owners of Palm VIIs and Web-enabled cell phones can even track their personal information wirelessly.

Yodlee is available on its own Web site as well as those of AltaVista, Quicken.com, freeInternet.com and WetFeet.com, among others.

Larry Pace signed up directly on the Yodlee site. Although he has enthusiasm for the service, he is disappointed that it doesn't link to his online accounts at Hibernia National Bank and X.com. He consolidates information from the online travel agency Travelocity, Delta Skymiles and four e-mail accounts. He spends about 15 minutes each visit and doesn't go to the site every day.

The Yodlee2Go software intrigues Pace, who says he's about to buy a Palm^TM or Handspring digital assistant. "I believe with one of those devices, I will find new uses for Yodlee," he says.

* Try Bankrate.com's free data storage and retrieval system to manage your money online. With ebalance, you can track exactly what you spend and where you spend it -- with no typing.

-- Posted: May 2, 2000