With Deeper Yodlee Tie-in, Bank of America Gives FinApps a Big Stamp of Approval

On the heels of Bank of America Corp.’s online banking site crashing for days this autumn and the bank announcing new debit card fees, some BofA customers (the bank says it has 58 million “relationships” with consumers and small businesses) have been questioning their choice of financial institution. But those doubts may dissolve as a result of an innovation BofA has been brewing online to help consumers save money.

Yesterday, BofA announced it plans to roll out more robust personal finance management functionality through an expanded partnership with Yodlee Inc. Though the deal’s details are limited, the bank intends to implement Yodlee FinApp platform and apps ecosystem, technology that helps FIs quickly build and deliver PFM services. The partnership will purportedly revitalize BofA’s online banking site with customizable PFM widgets.

Bank of America has 30 million users of its online banking service.

The implementation timeline or the functionalities to be introduced online with Yodlee, though, is not yet known. Yodlee would not disclose the specific BofA roadmap plans and BofA said no one was available for interviews. In general, FinApps are quick for banks to deploy to their web sites, according to Yodlee.

“[FinApps] have accelerated our ability to bring innovation to finance and consumers,” Anil Arora,Yodlee’s president and chief executive, tells Bank Innovation.

Speed to market is important to innovation as many banks have legacy technology in place.

“Technology has evolved so it’s not multiple years from start to finish,” Arora says. “FinApps are self-contained. [A bank] can take any one of our 250 apps, and with a few lines of code, can make it available on their web sites.”

FinApps are analogous to iPhone and Facebook apps, and banks can also let their customers decide which apps they wish to use in order to personalize their banking experience. One person may be attached to his credit rating app while another might be interested in an identity-protection app, explains Arora. No matter the preferences, consumers nationwide hunger for financial guidance.

“Consumers are begging for help,” he says.

BofA is the second major bank to make its Yodlee relationship well known. Recently, Citibank Inc. remodeled its web site, also partnering with the vendor to build up its PFM capabilities. The new Citi site aggregates third-party accounts, if a consumer chooses to integrate them, and offers tools like analyzing net worth and budget setting for users.

With two of the largest banks in the nation flipping to the FinApp model, apps seem likely to be a meaningful component to online banking’s future. For one, the big banks house a huge number of online bankers, and for two, their leads should foster copy cats.

“Banks want to make sure they are not disadvantaged vis a vis each other,” Arora tells Bank Innovation.

There are “multiple other large institutions” that are live and public with PFM financial apps, Arora says. Not all of those names can be publicly disclosed yet.

“We see this as the wave of the future,” he says. 

In February, Mark Schwanhausser, a Javelin senior analyst of multi-channel financial services, told Bank Innovation that a FI appetite for online banking apps was brewing. One reason why? The horrific state of personal finances, which Yodlee also identified as to why the online banking market is ripe for innovation.

“As consumers start to face up to the harsh financial crisis realities, consumers need to do more with managing personal finances,” Arora tells Bank Innovation. “Our parents did PFM with manual checkbook balancing. …Our generation chose not to.”

Today, Arora says the majority of consumers can’t answer simple questions like: where are you spending money?Because of that deficiency, Arora stresses the need to go beyond traditional banking. What apps will resonate the most with consumers remains a question mark.

“It’s hard to predict which [app] will have the most traction,” Arora says. But “we don’t want to be in the prediction business. We’ll make them available to consumers and they will decide.”