Bernard Hickey: Time for an integrated picture

Our banks want to keep customers within their own four walls. Photo / Supplied

Wouldn't it be great if people could monitor their spending and saving in one place so they could forecast their financial situation from their computer or phone?

If New Zealanders had been more informed about their financial health over the past decade we might have avoided the finance company debacle, the foreign debt blow-out and the surge in credit defaults.

An integrated financial picture might drive competition between banks and credit card companies, reducing fees and improving service.

Now, Personal Financial Management (PFM) tools are being developed to allow consumers to create that picture.

The biggest and best known - Mint and Wesabe - allow someone to collate how much they owe or what they have saved from a variety of sources, work out how much they spent and on what and use this information to predict their future financial position.

This trend towards online PFMs is more advanced in the US, where middlemen such as Yodlee have cut out the hard work of liaising with hundreds of banks and other providers to ensure services such as Mint and Wesabe can allow customers to easily pull the information together.

New Zealand's online accounting software services business Xero has just done a deal with Yodlee to help its offshore small business clients integrate their financial details in one place.

So why haven't our banks run with the PFM trend faster?

One reason is a lack of innovation and openness. Our banks want to keep the customers within their own four walls. So KiwiBank has launched its own tool called Heaps, BNZ is about to launch a tool in conjunction with Xero, and ASB has launched MyMoney.

This means customers can analyse their spending and saving, but only if they have all their accounts with the one bank. Westpac, ANZ and National have yet to launch their tools.

Local PFMs are trying to open their doors. Xero is planning to launch its XeroPersonal tool and Dunedin's Pocketsmith has asked banks for access.

It's time the Retirement Commission, the Commerce Commission and possibly even the Reserve Bank encouraged the banks to open their systems.

* Bernard Hickey is managing editor of interest.co.nz


bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz