Boston, MA, September 15, 2008 – A new report from Aite Group, LLC profiles the dominant vendors in the account aggregation space and analyzes their current strategies. The report provides a market positioning of key account aggregation vendors, and gives awards to the best account aggregation solution for both advisors and self-directed retail clients. It also provides an overview of personal finance management (PFM) - a practice that heavily relies on account aggregation - and of the major players in this space.

For a brief period in the late 1990s, account aggregation was primed to be the latest and greatest technology in the wealth management space. Online customer portals had become the norm for financial institutions at the time, and account aggregation allowed for the retrieval of account data by using the customer's username and password for those portals. However, the market downturn has slowed the growth of many emerging technologies, including account aggregation. Today, however, as financial services firms catering to the affluent move toward holistic wealth management, combined with the advent of PFM in the context of social networking, account aggregation technology is gaining attention once again. Many of the account aggregation providers have broadened the scope of activity of their firm, and redefined the market positioning of their account aggregation capabilities, and identified promising new opportunities for their services. In general, account aggregation vendors act less as a stand alone technology today, but serve as the engine that enables many applications, ranging from financial planning to PFM.

"The financial lives of consumers have not gotten any simpler in the last decade, and consumers and their financial advisors are struggling with this complexity," says Alois Pirker, senior analyst with Aite Group and co-author of this report. "The efficient management of assets and ability to make smart financial decisions require individuals to have a complete picture of their finances. Very few consumers, nor their advisors, have this information readily available, which is creating a revived demand for account aggregation capabilities."

The report compares account aggregation solutions from ByAllAccounts, CashEdge, uMonitor and Yodlee. The report names CashEdge the best account aggregation solution for advisors and Yodlee the best account aggregation solution for self-directed retail clients. It also provides brief profiles of major new players in the PFM space, including Wesabe, Mint, Geezeo and Cake Financial.

This 47-page Impact Report contains seven figures and nine tables. Clients of Aite Group's Wealth Management service can download the report.