In the digital age, data is everything. While financial institutions seem to be positioned on one side of the digital divide, and fintech startups on the other, a more productive and profitable alliance can be found at the mid-point through collaboration. Financial institutions (FIs) and fintech innovators both have growing needs for such a collaborative ecosystem where they can access data resources while working with one another in a safe, secure, and compliant manner. Envestnet® | Yodlee® can enable such a safe and neutral collaboration point – serving as a “Switzerland” of sorts for the development of digital financial services and apps, securely bridging the needs of consumers, financial institutions, and entrepreneurs. Banks have two critical customer-related challenges today. The first relates to their traditional customer base, who are increasingly interested in more and better data and insights that can help them make better financial decisions with the perspective enabled through a more holistic view of their finances. Yet, any given customer might only have some accounts with a bank – say, a checking and savings account. With the Envestnet | Yodlee Financial Data Platform enabling financial accounts in one place, a bank can provide customers with a broader view of his or her financial picture. The second challenge is the generational shifts and technological advances that are significantly changing the way people manage finances and with whom. Millennials and other digitally savvy consumers strongly prefer FinApps for their finances and are fueling their rapid growth. And they aren’t as attached to traditional banks as older generations are. Millennials want to be able to handle all of their important financial decisions in a way that is as simple, fun, and instantly gratifying as, say, Snapchat or Pokemon Go. So, banks need to move closer to the forefront of innovation and user experience, otherwise they will miss out on Gen Y altogether. Underpinning these challenges is the expectation that banks will continue to provide fortress-like security. Fintech innovators, on the other hand, tend to have a “follow the customer” philosophy. Unburdened by legacy data, technology and regulations, they aim to deliver innovations catering to what the customer wants out of a financial institution. They constantly invent, adjust and provide services based on a customer’s needs. However, these apps also rely on data from other organizations, such as banks, credit card issuers, and brokerages. In today’s data-driven environment, both FIs and fintech innovators need to deliver unfettered access to financial data and people who want to better manage their finances. The key is for consumers to enjoy the benefits of financial insights and innovations that will propel them throughout life while doing so in a secure and private manner. Fortunately there is a reasonable and proven way forward. For the past 17 years, Envestnet | Yodlee has been at the forefront of driving innovation in financial services, and has done so while building trusted and secure partnerships with leading financial institutions around the world by working with them to ensure its services meet their stringent security and compliance requirements. Envestnet | Yodlee is supervised and examined by the US banking regulators. In addition, we undertake a series of internal independent audits such as ISO27002, PCI-DSS certification and penetration testing (applications, systems and networks) as well as client assessments and ethical hack testing. This equates to more than 200 security assessments over the past two years. Envestnet | Yodlee also goes to extreme lengths to protect and preserve consumer privacy. For example, Envestnet | Yodlee receives permission-based transaction data elements and handles this de-identified data following leading industry practices for security and privacy protections. No other company providing aggregated financial data can match this experience, relationships, and security. So, what’s the benefit for the overall fintech ecosystem? Consumers have the opportunity to better understand their financial situation with a broad choice of safe and secure financial services and applications designed to help them prosper. Financial institutions can leverage data and data-driven insights to create innovative financial services that ultimately build long-standing customer relationships. And entrepreneurs can access the largest, most secure set of intelligent financial data to deliver financial innovation services to help their customers. To learn how Envestnet | Yodlee enables secure, aggregation-powered financial innovation applications, download this whitepaper on Account Aggregation and Security: What You Need to Know.
