Online Banking Gets More Sophisticated

The holy grail for all the financial providers is to get all of a customer's assets and debts in one place.

Online Banking Gets More Sophisticated
So now banks are offering new tools to let clients transfer funds between institutions, pay bills faster, analyze spending.

By getting customers to spend more time at their websites, banks hope to open more new accounts and bring in more assets.

In the latest move, Yodlee Inc., which manages online services for many financial institutions, is introducing a product today that allows consumers to track their spending across all of their accounts -- regardless of where those accounts are held -- and make same-day bill payments. Yodlee says it is currently in "advanced discussions" with 10 to 12 financial-services companies to offer the product to their customers.
--
More banks are expanding their "account aggregation" programs, in which details of a clients' bank, mutual-fund, brokerage, 401(k) and other accounts are presented on a single screen. Although the service has been around for several years, banks are only now starting to use it to power personal-finance management. Last year, Bank of America relaunched its account-aggregation service by allowing customers to access it with a single sign-on from their online-banking account. Since then, the number of people enrolled in the program has tripled.