While the early years of the internet brought a wave of new solutions that made it easier than ever to track one’s investments, it wasn’t until Mint.com showed up in 2006 that the true potential power of “account aggregation” was revealed, as the company grew to 1.5 million users in just two years and was sold the next to Intuit for a whopping $170 million.
Yet years later, the adoption of account aggregation in the financial services industry remains somewhat lackluster, particularly amongst the largest enterprise buyers like banks and financial advisor broker-dealers. While some new solutions roll out, and an occasional blockbuster deal is announced, relatively few new players have arrived on the scene for several years now, and a number of banks have recently announced that they are shutting down their PFM solutions.
A deeper look, though, reveals that perhaps the biggest blocking point to the growth of PFM solutions – particularly in the financial advisor channel – is that most remain mired in the early days of using account aggregation to simply compile investment performance reports and identify held-away assets. Relatively few have evolved to higher-level functions that would support the delivery of financial advice (and not just the sale of financial products), and even fewer have gone to the next level where account aggregation could be used to actually automate financial plan monitoring and the execution of financial planning strategies. In fact, when account aggregation providers are evaluated on the six levels of potential functionality, most have failed to even move beyond Level 1 or Level 2!
Fortunately, though, the reality is that the unit economics of providing account aggregation solutions to financial advisors are actually quite good, especially compared to the direct-to-consumer channel, and a few key players – including Envestnet’s Yodlee and Quovo – appear to be positioning themselves for the future growth opportunities of advice-centric account aggregation. Nonetheless, for the time being, account aggregation appears to be stuck in a chicken-and-egg dilemma that few providers are building advice-centric account aggregation solutions (instead remaining focused on only investment accounts), but the industry’s product-centric focus means few enterprises are demanding the Advice and Automation levels of account aggregation anyway.
However, with the ongoing shift of financial advisors towards real financial advice, catalyzed by the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, the logjam may finally be about to break free – creating a wave of new account aggregation solutions that can power next generation financial advisor dashboards and client PFM portals that truly help to deepen the value-add of a financial advisor!
source https://www.kitces.com/blog/six-levels-account-aggregation-pfm-fintech-solutions-accounts-advice-automation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=six-levels-account-aggregation-pfm-fintech-solutions-accounts-advice-automation
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