Macquarie forced to halt account aggregation
Australia’s first account aggregation or screen scraping service has hit a snag.
Macquarie's Financial Enrichment division has close down its account aggregation service after its original service provider exited the market.
In September, Macquarie launched the online aggregated service, enrichment.com.au with Parkers' Edge's US based supplier, Corillian. Two months later, Macquarie shut down the site after Corillian exited the market.
Parkers' Edge will continue in the account aggregation market, signing a distribution deal with US-based provider, 724 Solutions last month. The group, which develops its own aggregation technology, nettposition will also unveil a major development next week.
Macquarie has subsequently signed up with US-based Sybase to use its TekPortal product.
Financial Enrichment chief executive Robert King says the change in supplier will leave the site unoperational until the end of November.
King says despite his disappointment with the sudden break in operation so early in the piece, the signing with TekPortal will give Macquarie another opportunity to enhance its online service.
"At the moment there is low demand for screen scraping, but we believe the demand will take off as more people get online," he says.
"By Christmas, Enrichment will deliver aggregation of a greater range of financial institutions, on-line brokers and reward points."
King says the service will be provided free to end-users and the group is currently seeking partnerships with financial planning groups to promote their service through their Web sites.
Macquarie's site will continue to allow customers to combine their online banking and broking services and report under one set of access details.
As previously reported in Money Management, Macquarie was the first financial services screen scraping venture in Australia. The group narrowly beat out AMP for the honour, with AMP also launching its screen scraping venture in September using US-based VerticalOne.
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