Personal Finance Management Beyond PFM Lite: How to Create the Next Generation of Consumer Money Management

Abstract

Overview

The economic crisis has accentuated consumers' hunger for effective money-management tools. Web startups such as Mint, Geezeo and Wesabe have raised consumer expectations, vividly demonstrating how practical and simple such tools can be for monitoring and analyzing one' s finances. But banks and credit unions still hold the fundamental advantage of being able to pair such tools with the unmatched ability to conduct transactions in a trusted environment. Included are a product roadmap and detailed feature comparison and ranking of seven online-banking vendors: Digital Insight, Fiserv, Jwaala, Harland Financial Solutions, Metavante, S1 and Yodlee. Part one of a two-part series, this report will be followed with a second report highlighting the consumer attitudes and behaviors.

• What are the most important elements of a winning personal finance management (PFM) package?
• How should vendors develop their product roadmaps for money-management tools?
• What capabilities define a second-generation “PFM Deluxe” offering?
• Where is personal financial management headed in the future?
• Which online-banking vendors offer the most compelling and complete personal finance capabilities?

• Audience: Financial institutions: E-commerce, mobilebanking and marketing strategists.
• Vendors: Online-banking platform providers, online-banking vendors, online-banking marketing.
• Others: Personal finance Web sites.
• Authors: Mark Schwanhausser, Analyst, Multichannel Financial Services
• Length: 49 pages, 8 charts/graphs

Methodology

This vendor analysis is based on a survey collected from executives with each of the seven online-banking platform vendors. Additional information was solicited during interviews with executives from the vendors, banks and credit unions and Web-based startups.

To evaluate products, Javelin asked each vendor to answer nearly 125 questions that delved into the availability of specific features and functionality. For example, the category of “customer-controlled” covered 10 questions exploring 34 specific features or capabilities, while the category of “transparent” capabilities was composed of a single question broken into 11 parts.