Giant account aggregator lands in Australia

The world’s largest account aggregation group, Yodlee, has landed in Australia,

with big plans for the local market.

Yodlee'e entrance into the market comes just weeks after it merged with its biggest rival VerticalOne in the US. The merger means Yodlee has more than 100 clients using the aggregation technology, allowing customers to access a range of personal details such as managed fund balances, shares, loans, bank accounts, insurance, reward points and email accounts in the one location.

Yodlee International marketing director Steven Gibson says of the 800,000 consumers of account aggregation in the US, 765,000 are using a service provided by Yodlee's platform. Company research shows financial accounts have the highest level of aggregation at 38 per cent.

Yodlee's move into international expansion has already begun in the UK and India, and Australia is the first of several countries to be targeted this year.

Gibson says Canada, Singapore and the Japanese markets will also be focused upon before looking at other European countries such as Germany and France.

"Australia is a market with opportunities and less barriers, and there has been a level of interest from financial institutions.

"What we saw in the US were financial institutions coming in after the banks, but in Australia the financial institutions want to be first in," Gibson says.

AMP Financial Services already offer an account aggregation service from the Yodlee platform, having aligned with VerticalOne last year. AMP's Account Minder service was launched last September as a free service to the general public.

AMP Solutions Development & Integration national manager Joe Borg won't divulge numbers but says users of the account aggregation service are now in the thousands.

"The [AMP Account Minder] service has reached volume and take-up expectations," Borg says.

Last month Charles Schwab joined Yodlee's group of clients and launched its My Account service in the US. In Australia, Yahoo! Finance Australia & NZ will be the next to launch with its Online Account Access service later this month.

The Yodlee platform carries a fairly hefty price tag of $500,000 to $700,000 set up fee plus monthly fee (based on number of users), but Gibson is confident of growth in the service.

"Our target is 200 signed partners and five million overall users by the end of the year," he says.