Account aggregation heats up in Oz
Australia’s account aggregation market is heating up with the launch of the world’s biggest account aggregation specialists Yodlee.
Yodlee's entrance into the Australian market comes just weeks after it merged with its biggest rival VerticalOne. Yodlee international marketing director Steven Gibson says that of the 800,000 consumers of account aggregation in the US, 765,000 are using a service powered by the Yodlee platform.
Account aggregation allows consumers to access all their banking, insurance, investment and frequent flyer information through one Web site. It offers a similar but much less sophisticated single statement of net wealth as wrap account.
Yodlee has already made significant inroads into the US financial services market, signing up the likes of citibank, E*Trade, Chase, ABN-AMRO and First Union. In Australia, the group already services AMP, who aligned with VerticalOne last year to run the account aggregation service AMP Account Minder. Yodlee is in discussions with a number of other financial services groups.
"Australia is a market with opportunities and less barriers, and there has been a level of interest from financial institutions," Gibson says.
Last month US-based Charles Schwab signed up for Yodlee's service, while Yahoo! Finance Australia & NZ will be the next to launch in Australia with its Online Account Access service later this month.
Other recent entrants into the account aggregation market include eWise who launched its aggregation service last September. The service currently has 1100 clients dealing directly with eWise.com.au accessing more than 60 service providers.
Like Yodlee, the service is also rebadged and in use by a number of third parties including National Australia Bank and St George Bank. Chief executive Alex Grinberg says discussions are under way with at least a dozen other financial services groups and online providers to further roll out the service.
More established on the Australian and New Zealand market is Parkers' Edge, who started out in Internet banking about six years ago before moving into a broader range of e-finance products, including account aggregation.
The group has worked with a number of the big names in banking, such as ANZ, and Suncorp-Metway, implementing Internet banking systems.
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