Account aggregation is not a new concept in wealth management. Given the increased focus on cost minimization and operational efficiencies, however, it has received markedly more attention in the past 18 months.
In a new report, Ranking the Vendors of Account Aggregation Technology 2009, Celent examines the state of the market for account aggregation offerings and profiles and benchmarks the offerings of 10 vendors and service providers in this space.
The solutions covered in this report are: Buxfer, ByAllAccounts, Cake Financial, CashEdge, Geezeo, Intuit, Mint, uMonitor, Wesabe, and Yodlee. The report provides a more in-depth look at those four firms providing account aggregation technology: ByAllAccounts, CashEdge, uMonitor, and Yodlee. To this end, the study utilizes the Celent ABCD Vendor View, which shows at a glance the relative position of vendors in four overarching categories: Advanced technology, Breadth of functionality, Customer base (number of clients), and Depth of client services.
No one solution is considered best in all categories, but rather solutions differentiated themselves in and among the various functionalities analyzed. Within the breadth of functionality category, CashEdge is the most notable vendor, followed closely by Yodlee. In the advanced technology category, ByAllAccounts received the highest score, with Yodlee coming in second. Overall, CashEdge and ByAllAccounts have the largest client bases among the analyzed vendors. In the last category, depth of client services, the top quartile is dominated by Yodlee and CashEdge, followed by ByAllAccounts and uMonitor.
As regards the remaining firms, those that provide personal financial management or consumer investing offerings, the report provides a higher-level overview.
"There has long been a strong business case for account aggregation,” says Isabella Fonseca, Celent senior analyst and author of the report. 'In the current environment, however, financial institutions are all the more keen to address four issues which account aggregation technology can help advance: cost minimization, operational efficiencies, data quality, and customer loyalty."
