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By DAVE GUSSOW, Times Personal Technology Editor
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 9, 2001
Online banking gives consumers access to their accounts at one financial institution. If they want to check various brokerage, mortgage or other accounts online, they have to hop from Web site to Web site.
That's where account aggregation sites come in. These consolidate users' accounts for display on one Web page. Some, such as Yodlee (www.yodlee.com), let consumers access multiple accounts without changing sites.
But according to online measurement company Gomez Inc., only 13 percent of online users are aware of such sites. And consumers worry about security and privacy issues in letting some dot-com know all the elements of their portfolio, though Gomez expects those concerns to diminish over time.
Yodlee's service is free (it makes its money by licensing its software to others). Setting up an account is easy. I listed a retirement account, an IRA, two brokerage accounts, an AmSouth checking account and a mortgage, as well as set up access to e-mail accounts at Hotmail and Yahoo.
Once an account is opened, a user goes back to the Yodlee home page and logs in with a name and password. It opens to a page that has an overview of the accounts that the user set up, showing current balances. It also will give a daily update on the overall assets, with up and down arrows and percentage changes. Charts also can be created from the account activity and changes.
To go to a Web site of a particular account, such as Charles Schwab, the user simply clicks a link. The necessary sign-on information would have been set up during the initial process to make the connection between Yodlee and Schwab.
Yodlee automatically updates the accounts at least once a day, and users can manually check accounts any time. It also has alerts for matters such as how much an account rose or fell during a month, or when bills are due.
The only account that I couldn't access through Yodlee was the AmSouth checking account. I sent an e-mail to Yodlee's tech support to report the problem. It took several weeks before I was told it was fixed -- but it wasn't. I'm still waiting for an update.
While Gomez identifies Yodlee as the market leader in aggregation, it also says that other big names are in the field, including American Express, Citicorp and Fidelity. And more than 25 percent of consumers are likely to use such services if offered by their primary bank, according to Gomez.