Cambridge, MA, USA, March 20, 2000 Report published by Celent Communications
Exploding from virtually nowhere to the number one concern of chief information officers at leading financial institutions in the USA is the issue of account aggregation, or screen scraping, on the Internet. In a new report titled , Celent Communications analyzes the significant competitive risks and potential financial impact that account aggregators will create in electronic financial services, and outlines how financial institutions can respond to the challenge posed by screen scrapers. This is the first in-depth report ever published on this issue.
Members of Celent Communications Retail Banking and Retail Securities & Investments research services can be download this report electronically by clicking on the icon to the right. A Table of Contents for this report can be viewed online.
Account aggregators allow consumers to view their holdings and information at multiple financial institutions at a single location on the Internet. Account aggregators do this by having users provide them the usernames and passwords to all the accounts they wish to see in one place on the Internet, and by then accessing the users accounts, extracting the necessary data, and presenting these data to the client.
Octavio Marenzi, Managing Director at Celent, points out that "the quickest-moving financial institutions are planning immediate responses to account aggregators. They recognize that the screen scraper phenomena is a classic double-edged sword. Left to others, it could commoditize financial services beyond recall, with potentially devastating impact on customer relationships. Alternately, this relatively straightforward technology offers one of the most aggressive marketing tools ever seen, for those who want to jump in the fray"
In addition to exploring the overall market for account aggregation, this Celent report charts potential strategies that financial institutions can implement to both prevent their customers' accounts from being aggregated on the web, and points to strategies to participate in this market. The report goes on to examine some of the leading providers of account aggregation software solutions. Including Corillian, EZ Login, PayTrust, VerticalOne and Yodlee.
