Personal Financial Management Archives - Page 9 of 13

Intuit Launches Quicken Beam: Free Text-Message Alerts & Balance Inquiry

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 25, 2008
Categories: Intuit, Launches, Mobile Banking, Personal Financial Management

Intuit joined the messaging race with the beta release of Quicken Beam. The free service sends users text-messaged balance-and-activity alerts from most U.S. bank, credit card, and credit union accounts. Users may also query the service for balance plus last five transactions by texting “Bal” to the short code 636363.

Currently, the service runs independently of Quicken and can be used by anyone free of charge. According to the official press release, the service was developed in Intuit Labs.

What’s innovative
It’s not a new feature. Quicken Online (see second screenshot below), along with most major banks and personal finance specialists (Mint, Rudder, Wesabe), already supports text-message alerts (see note 1). But this is a relatively low-cost way to hook users early on with an extremely simple service, then migrate them to more robust Intuit services later on (Quicken, QuickBooks, TurboTax).

And the Quicken stamp of approval means a lot when turning over your log-in credentials to a third party. If you want to talk to the company about Quicken Beam, Intuit will be demo’ing the latest features of Quicken Online at our Finovate Conference in October.

Financial institutions that lack text-message support might consider linking customers to Quicken Beam. Yes, you are turning customers over to another financial provider, and yes, your compliance folks will hate it. But customers are going to do it whether you want them to or not. You might as well get credit for making a solid recommendation. And realistically, using Quicken Beam is unlikely to hasten anyone’s exit from your bank or credit union.

Qucken Beam homepage (25 Aug 2008)

Text messaging in Quicken Online (25 Aug 2008)

Notes:
1. Geezeo really differentiated itself with mobile capabilities in its May 2007 launch.

2. For more information, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features.

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Rudder (formerly SpendView) Launches New Mint-like Personal Finance Site

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 23, 2008
Categories: Launches, Personal Financial Management, Rudder

There's a new challenger in the online PFM space, aptly named start-up Rudder which is headquartered in Houston, TX (see note 1). The company was founded in 2007 and launched last year under the name SpendView (note 2). The company raised $2 million in January from Meakem Becker Venture Capital. The founder is Nikhil Roy.

What's innovative
While it's a bit busy for my tastes, Rudder's homepage is aesthetically pleasing, and more importantly, lays out a number of remarkable benefits that every financial institution should be able to deliver on:

Finances in your inbox: emphasizes that it's pushing info to you, not relying on your obsessive monitoring of a website
Paying bills on time: They don't just help you pay the bills; Rudder makes sure you pay them ON TIME, a huge difference in terms of consumer benefits
Think forward: Everyone has a sense of what they really have in the bank after upcoming expenses are met, but Rudder actually does the math for you and shows you what's truly "free cash" in your account after accounting for upcoming payments
Every morning: Rudder provides a personal-finance heads-up each morning so you can go about your day without thinking about your finances
Safe & secure: Self-explanatory, but cannot be overlooked

Clearly, Rudder has been studying how Mint grabbed an early following with great design, advanced functionality, and a brash point of view. However, it won't be able repeat Mint's PR coup last year of winning at TechCrunch40 and our Finovate 2007 (see note 4). Rudder has scheduled its public debut at competing techfest, Demo Fall, running Sept. 7-9 and unfortunately were not on our radar screen until after the Finovate 2008 lineup was set (note 5).

What it means
You gotta love Web-based startups. It took a decade for Wells Fargo to move from delivering plain old statement info on its website to offering rudimentary personal finance functionality in My Spending Report.

But less than two years after Wesabe (note 2) kicked off the Personal Finance 2.0 era, we have dozens of cool personal finance companies looking to make a name for themselves. Mint (note 2) is the most hyped (see coverage), but there are also great things going on at Geezeo, Jwaala (note 3), Buxfer, ClearCheckbook, Mvelopes, and, of course, Quicken Online, which has Coke-like brand awareness.

And don't rule out the incumbent financial institutions. PNC Bank (post here) and Frost Bank (post here) have both introduced novel accounts that incorporate advanced personal finance functions. And Bank of America has offered full-service PFM functions since late 2006 with Yodlee-powered MyPortfolio.

Rudder homepage with five key benefits highlighted (21 Aug 2008)

Your "real" balance widget
I love the focus on what you really have in your account, after netting out all the known bills in the coming month. Here's the graphical feedback Rudder provides.

Notes:
1. Rudder seems like a good name for a financial management app. What do you think Jeffry?

2. The previous version, SpendView, is still live at <spendview.org>, but the original spendview.com now redirects to rudder.com.

3. See Wesabe and Mint demo their latest features at the upcoming Finovate 2008. Mint won Best of Show at Finovate 2007.

4. Jwaala was Best of Show winner at Finovate Startup, April 2008.

5. Attention startups: It's never too early to make an introduction and get on our Finovate watch list. We're already putting notes together for 2009. Contact Online Banking Report/Netbanker editor Jim Bruene.

6. For more info on the space, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance

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First Sales Report on an iPhone Finance App: Tipulator Downloaded 3,200 Times

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 15, 2008
Categories: Apple, iPhone, Personal Financial Management

According to TechCrunch, the $0.99 tip calculator app from TapTapTap has been downloaded 3,200 times in the month it’s been available. Net income to the developer, after Apple takes its 30% cut, is $2,200.

TapTapTap also markets a much more sophisticated location-based search tool that has generated $50,000 in revenues for the developer.

Tipulator is ranked number 20 in our Aug. 5 rundown of the top-20 banking and finance apps. Today it ranked number 27.

Apple ranks the most popular apps within each category, but does not provide download totals. Tipulator numbers were provided by developer.

What it means
1. iPhone users, so far, are willing to pay for apps. Who would have thought that more than 3,000 people would go to the trouble to download an app to help them multiply their bill times 15% to 20%? And there are two tip calculators that ranked higher in the App Store.

2. There is real demand for mobile financial tools, even very simple ones. Financial institutions should consider launching a branded calculator app in the Apple App Store.

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Wesabe Adds Twitter Integration for Account Updates

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 11, 2008
Categories: Personal Financial Management, Twitter, Wesabe

Wesabe’s latest feature, the ability to update your account via Twitter, isn’t likely to find too many users in the short-term. However, it’s a great marketing move that could see a fair amount of uptake over time (see note 1).

Although there are less than 2 million Twitter users, the company is currently white hot, one of the most talked about Internet companies (see Google trends below, which shows Twitter search volume is 7x or 8x that of “phishing“). So why not draft off Twitter’s hype, as long as it’s not too costly?

How it works
After logging in to Wesabe and providing your Twitter name, you then simply send a private or public message (aka Tweets) to Wesabe’s Twitter account. Wesabe then adds the expense to your cash-tracking account. You can include merchant name, expense categories, and descriptions to the transaction (see examples below).

Most common: Update via private message (no one else will see)

Less likely: Update via public message (your friends will receive it, and if you have an open feed, anyone could see it)

Google Trends for Twitter vs. phishing (9 Aug 2008)

Note:
1. Updating accounts via text message and email has much wider appeal. It’s one of the recommended items in our personal finance feature set. See our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features for more info.

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Mint Site Traffic Grows by 60,000 in July

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 7, 2008
Categories: Metrics & Market Research, Mint, Personal Financial Management

According to Compete, website traffic to personal-finance startup Mint increased to 460,000 in July compared to 400,000 the month before, for a 13% increase. Site traffic has quadrupled since December, gaining 350,000 unique monthly visitors.

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Frost Bank Momentum Account Combines Reward Checking and Personal Financial Management

By Jim Bruene Posted on July 30, 2008
Categories: Andera, Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Personal Financial Management

After a solid decade ignoring the financial management features of online banking (see note 1), we now have two banks doing very interesting things melding transaction accounts with personal financial management.

Frost Bank is the latest visionary, launching its Momentum Account this week (press release). The account melds high-yield checking, goal-oriented savings, and financial management into one online offering. Unlike PNC Bank’s VirtualWallet, which is clearly aimed at the youth market (see previous coverage), Momentum goes directly to the online sweet spot, 30- and 40-somethings trying to manage their money in a more systematic way.

The account
Basically, it’s a fee-free, interest-bearing checking account with the usual freebies: debit card, online banking, bill pay. After the first three months, balances of $15,000+ earn 3% and those under $15,000 earn basically zero. However, the bank has added an interesting twist they call “DIY APY (see screenshot below). For every 10 monthly debit card transactions, they add 5 basis points to the interest rate, up to a maximum gain of 0.25% (for 50 debit card transactions).

That’s a piddling amount, earning about a buck a month (pre-tax) for someone with $25,000 in the account typically doing 10 to 19 debit card transactions monthly. Yet most consumers like the feeling of winning the rewards game, so it should be good for marketing and retention.

Like PNC’s VirtualWallet, online account opening is powered by Andera.

The innovations
Besides the DIY APY gimmick, the new account is noteworthy because it incorporates goal-oriented savings and transaction tracking into the interface. Users can allocate funds to one or more savings goals and set up automated transfers to the savings sub-accounts.

The interface also includes budget-categorization features using the folders metaphor. And the usual charting and graphing functions are available. Unfortunately, there is no online demo, so I could see only the features in the bank’s demo video.

Is it trendworthy?
I’m not ready to say that two examples make a trend, but given all the interest by investors and the press in online personal finance, I think this is the beginning of an interesting period in online finance product development.

Frost Bank homepage announces “DIY APY” (30 July 2008)

Note:
1. See Online Banking Report: Personal Finance Features for Online Banking for more information on the pros and cons of various personal finance features.

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Green Sherpa to Enter the Online Personal Finance Market in September

By Jim Bruene Posted on July 18, 2008
Categories: Personal Financial Management

I came across Green Sherpa in a Web search a few weeks ago. The Santa Barbara, CA-based startup is planning a Sept. 8 launch. The homepage (shown below) is not currently functional. All links point to a page where users can sign up for more info to be delivered at a later date.

The tagline, “A more efficient way to track your personal finances,” is intriguing (note 1), but no word on how Green Sherpa will differentiate itself from Mint, Jwaala, Wesabe and the rest. But the name is wonderful.

Note:
1. This tagline, visible on its placeholder site in early July, has since been replaced with “Sophisticated cash flow management that’s simple to use.”

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PNC Bank Takes on Mint & Quicken with PNC Virtual Wallet

By Jim Bruene Posted on July 14, 2008
Categories: Andera, Bank 2.0, Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Personal Financial Management, PNC Bank

Just when you thought Mint, Wesabe, and Geezeo had a lock on all the headlines for Gen Y personal finance, along comes a truly inspired effort from a major U.S. retail bank. Furthermore, it’s not from Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, or even ING Direct.

Pittsburgh, PA-based PNC Bank, the 15th-largest U.S. retail bank with $83 billion in deposits (see note 1), today launched a new online combo account called PNC Virtual Wallet.

The account comes with a checking account, bill payment, and two types of savings accounts. It also features several unique personal financial management features with an emphasis on functions most likely to appeal to a 20-something audience:

Cash flow: debit card, checking, online bill pay, financial calendar, recent transaction report
Savings: two types of savings accounts, automated savings options, wish list, and a random video-game-inspired savings tool called “punch the pig” (see below)

Finally, the account is priced well:

No fees (except $0.50 per written check after the first 3 per month and the usual penalty fees)
Free overdraft protection among linked accounts
3% APY on the growth savings component
ATM-free rebate (but only if there’s a $2000 average monthly balance in the checking account portion)

What’s innovative? (note 2)

Package of three deposit accounts: Spend Account (e.g., checking), Reserve Account (e.g., savings) and Growth Account (e.g., high-yield savings or money market deposit account)
Ability to move money among the three accounts by moving a slider across the screen, called the Money Bar
Automated savings function called Savings Engine that allows users to set up time-triggered (e.g., once per week) or event-triggered (e.g., each debit card use) automatic savings transfers
Savings game called Punch the Pig, a video-game-inspired savings gimmick: Each time the pig appears on screen, users can elect to “punch” it to automatically move money from checking to savings
Wish List with savings goals and progress reports

What can be improved?
Four areas that are noticeably absent, or at least not mentioned:

Mobile functionality, especially text banking and alerts
Online customer support: Customer can apply online through the Andera-powered app; however, there is no link to any online-support options such as chat, IM, text, or even a Web-based input form or old-school email address
Social aspects: forums, reviews, blogs, or even testimonials (note 4)
Credit: credit cards, line of credit, auto loans, and so on

The website design is impressive and very un-banklike, yet it lacks some basics:

No demo: There are several Flash instructional videos that show most of the key features, but there is no all-encompassing demo for users wanting a tryout before buying.
Lame homepage videos: Granted, I’m not in the Gen Y target market so I could be wrong, but if I think the videos are lame, what do you think a 22-year-old will make of them? I say lose the “man on the street videos” or reshoot them in a less-scripted manner.
Extensive FAQs: The FAQs need to be expanded tenfold. Currently, only 16 questions and answers are up, but with so many unique features, that number doesn’t come close to answering many basic questions, such as “Are there account alerts?” or “What’s the rate of interest on the reserve account” (note 3), or “How long are transactions stored?”

PNC Bank virtual wallet homepage (14 July 2008)

Explanation of “Punch the Pig” savings feature

Notes:
1. Deposits as of 31 Dec 2007; deposits were up 25% compared to $66 billion as of year-end 2006.

2. PNC has applied for a patent on the account and tools.

3. Eventually, I did find a link to interest rates and fees on the “how to apply” page

4. See Online Banking Report on Social Personal Finance for more info

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FiLife Debuts, Personal Finance Powered by Dow Jones and IAC

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 13, 2008
Categories: FiLife, Lead Generation, Personal Financial Management

I’ve been reading the FiLife blog and monitoring its URL since I heard about the intriguing concept last summer. After a couple false starts, the site went live yesterday.

The unique joint effort between News Corp’s Dow Jones and IAC is a cross between a personal finance tool like those powered by LeadFusion, a finance forum like FatWallet, a voting site such as Digg, and a full-blown magazine such as Money. It’s dripping with Web 2.0 touches from the trendy design to blogging with attitude and harnessing the collective intelligence of the user base.

The core FI Deals area shown below allows users to self-assess their financial situations. In FiLife-speak, it shows how you stack up, in key areas such as income, home value, credit score, debt and even the value of your car. The people pyramid (in the screenshot below) shows an orange stick figure representing where you stand against the rest of the country.

Following a few ideas on how to improve your standing, FiLife presents financial deals in descending order of how valuable the FiLife community deems them. In this case, a mortgage offer from Citibank is listed first due to its top-of-the-line 5-point score. In this case, since it’s the first day the site’s been live, the score comes from a single review by a FiLife staffer. As the site gains users, this score would reflect the average across all reviewers.

The other key area is the FiDeals (screenshot below). Here users can search the top deals across all categories as voted on by the community. Some deals have been placed in the site via sponsorship dollars. Those are indicated by the gold pyramid. Blue pyramid offers have been added by staff members. In either case, the score shown within the colored pyramid reflects the vote of the community, which includes staff member votes.

First Impressions
The deep-pocketed owners have the resources to build traffic and establish the FiLife brand, if they find it profitable. Assuming it gets significant visitor traction, this could be the place to find financial and banking deals online, at least in the United States.

The business model is clearly ad-supported. There’s nothing on the site at this point that would command subscription fees. And so far, the advertising is less intrusive than many other financial portals. And the bright look and good organization, not to mention professional personal finance content, add up to a potential winner.

But FiLife faces the same problem all ad-supported personal finance sites have: how to walk the fine line between the needs of users who want to find the best price vs. that of the advertisers that do not want to compete solely on price. FiLife sponsors may bolt if the community consistently posts poor reviews on their price-value. On the other hand, Google is dong just fine with AdWords, by ensuring that advertising is relevant. It will be interesting to see how FiLife strikes the proper balance.

And it’s no sure thing that FiLife ends up as the winner in the space. FiLife faces competition not only from startups such as SmartHippo, Wesabe, and Mint, but also from entrenched sites such as BankRate and TheStreet.com. And don’t count out the incumbent personal finance magazines, including Dow Jones’s own SmartMoney. These properties have enormous brand recognition and have already built substantial websites.

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Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg Loves Mint, Hates Financial Email

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 1, 2008
Categories: Alerts & Messaging, Mint, Personal Financial Management, Security & Privacy

It was online banking week in Walt Mossberg’s popular Wall Street Journal technology columns. Yesterday in The Mossberg Solution, authored by 20-something Katherine Boehret and edited by Mossberg, Mint’s personal finance service received a half-page article so complimentary I had to look twice to make sure it wasn’t an advertisement. Boehret couldn’t find a single thing wrong with the service, although she did wish for bill payment capability so she could do all her banking with Mint. I’m sure she’ll have her wish granted relatively soon.

In today’s Personal Technology column entitled, How to Avoid Cons that Can Lead to Identify Theft, Mossberg himself dropped a bomb which will impact bank-marketing efforts for years to come. His first of seven tips for safe computing:

Never, ever click on a link embedded in an email (from your) financial institution….

That’s harsh, but it’s also understandable why he’d take that stand. Mossberg strives to make technology issues understandable to non-techie readers. However, it would have been better to add, “unless your bank adds account-specific personalization to the messages so you know for sure where they originated.”

Action items
Many financial institutions, including Citibank and Bank of America, have long used personalization to distinguish legitimate messages from phishing attempts. Financial institutions with good personalized messaging should consider a public outreach program to counter the negative perception from the Mossberg column. It also might be a good time to remind front-line employees how to respond to customer concerns about phishing emails.

For more information, see our Online Banking Report on Marketing Security.

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Bank of America Reports 2.5 Million Users of My Portfolio, its Online Personal Finance Tool

By Jim Bruene Posted on April 21, 2008
Categories: Bank of America, BillMonk, Expensr, Geezeo, Market Research & Metrics, Mint, Personal Financial Management, Wesabe, Yodlee

Two months ago we published a table (here) showing active users at the leading online personal finance startups. Below is the table, updated with March traffic and the addition of one more player: Bank of America.

The bank, which offers a full-featured online personal finance management solution called My Portfolio, powered by Yodlee, has 2.5 million active users, according to BofA exec Marina Moore (note 3). That's an impressive 10% of the bank's online user base, and about 6x the total user base of all the online startups combined (note 4).

Company	Users (1)	% of Total	March Traffic(2)	Jan Traffic(2)	Chg
Bank of America	2.5 million	86%	—	—	—
Mint	180,000	6%	160,000	150,000	7%
Wesabe	100,000	3%	28,000	41,000	(32%)
Buxfer	80,000	3%	8,400	9,200	(9%)
Geezeo	20,000+	0.7%	8,400	14,000	(40%)
NetWorthIQ	13,000	0.5%	10,000	11,000	(10%)
BillMonk	10,000+	0.3%	1,700	1,000	+70%
Expensr	Five figs	0.3%+	2,000	1,700	+18%
Total	2.9 million	100%

For more information:

Online Banking Report (131/132): Personal Finance Features for Online Banking
Online Banking Report (142/143): Social Personal Finance
Our FinovateStartup Conference April 29 in San Francisco, where Buxfer, Expensr, Jwaala, Mint, and Wesabe will present the latest in online personal finance features

Notes/Sources:

1. Users: per BusinessWeek Online, Feb 2008, figures are reported by the companies and may include inactive users; Mint has been updated to 180,000 from 130,00 based on new figures reported in the Bank Technology News article published in April 2008

2. Traffic: per Compete estimates of website traffic for March 2008, retrieved April 21, 2008. Compete estimates traffic from its online data and can be off by a factor of two or three-fold for smaller websites.

3. As reported in a Bank Technology News article published in April 2008.

4. This table does not reflect all the players, such as Intuit's new Quicken Online, just the ones highlighted in the BusinessWeek article.

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400,000 Users at Online Personal Finance Startups

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 22, 2008
Categories: BillMonk, Buxfer, Expensr, Geezeo, Mint, Personal Financial Management, Wesabe

In a Feb. 11 BusinessWeek Online feature (here), reporter John Tozzi listed the self-reported user bases at seven new entrants in online personal finance. The roundup led with an anecdote about Wesabe CEO Jason Knight answering phone calls from users (see inset).

The seven companies listed below are only a subset of the online personal finance space. The list does not include users at Quicken Online, Yodlee, Mvelopes, and another two dozen smaller players. Nor does it include users at financial institutions that support online personal financial management such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Key Bank, River City Bank and others.

Company	Users	Traffic
Mint*	135,000	150,000
Wesabe*	100,000	41,000
Buxfer*	80,000	9,200
Geezeo	20,000+	14,000
NetWorthIQ	13,000	11,000
BillMonk	10,000+	1,000
Expensr*	Five figures	1,700
Total	370,000+	230,000

Sources: Users per BusinessWeek Online, Feb 2008, figures are reported by the companies and may include inactive users; Traffic: Compete, Inc, estimated unique visitors for January 2008