An October 2000 Investment News article titled “Online account aggregation could hurt advisers” predicts large banks will leverage electronic account aggregation technology to “cross-sell” their in-house products “effectively freezing out” competitors such as competing institutions and financial advisors. Don Phillips, the then CEO of Morningstar, weighs in on the subject to basically say electronic aggregation removes a value-added service offered by advisors. And what is the value-added service being eliminated? The manual process of reviewing paper statements to make sense of an investor-client’s financial life. The elimination of manual data collection and entry was going to hurt financial advisors. Amazing, right? It’s an interesting look back at the early stages of electronic account aggregation.
Account aggregation in 2011 and beyond is a software financial advisors must seriously consider as they prepare their 2012 technology budgets.
Financial Planning Magazine reached out to me last month to get my views on the state of account aggregation today. Click here to read the interview.
