for expert insights on the most pressing topics financial professionals are facing today.
Learn MoreWhen we’ve talked about the API Transition over the past year, we’ve mainly focused on APIs as they relate to our Connections platform – and rightly so. Data aggregation and building new APIs to transition client connections away from screen-scraping will ALWAYS be a focus. However, that’s just one part of the overall discussion happening here at eMoney when it comes to Connections.
We know that Data Aggregation is one of the top reason’s advisors use our platform and we’re dedicated to data. Keep reading to learn the 5 things you should know about eMoney Connections.
Clients today don’t want you to tell them what you can do for them, they want you to show them. And they certainly don’t want to fill out long and complex data gathering forms to get a taste of what you can offer. FlexGen advisors are embracing data aggregation to streamline the fact-gathering process. And when you have access to the data and tools you need to quickly produce a sample financial plan, you can immediately show the value of your offering.
Beyond engaging with prospects and new clients, accurate and reliable data aggregation creates the foundation required for a planning led approach to financial advice. The transition from the foundational sample plan to a full-fledged financial plan is in the details. Details that show your client that their financial plan is worth what it costs them. Details that can only be provided by creating a complete financial model using their real account data.
We know how important data aggregation is to you. It’s started as a core pillar in our planning philosophy and is more important now than ever.
We’ve transitioned tens of thousands of client connections to newly released APIs this year and are nearing the completion of two of our highest volume connections that will convert over 50,000 additional connections from screen-scraping to API-based data aggregation.
At each step of the way, we’re reaching out directly to the advisors and their teams whose clients are being impacted by these transitions and providing them updates on the individual transitions and sample client-facing language to help them communicate the change. Because over the course of this year, we’ve received a lot of questions like, Why APIs?, What do we need to know?, and more recently How long until it’s complete?.
Unfortunately, the answer to the last questions is never. Because for every institution that’s ready to move into the future of data aggregation there’s another that isn’t ready to dive into the wide world of APIs and we’ll never stop trying to work with these financial institutions to aggregate their data in a more secure and reliable way. In the meantime, we’ll continue to partner with forward-thinking institutions to help them build and connect their APIs with ours and when needed use parsers your client’s data.
While APIs have dominated the headlines this year our Data Aggregation team has remained hard at work improving the overall connections experience. They started by making it easier than ever to link manually created accounts on the Client Portal and have made tons of quality of life changes you may not have even noticed like pre-filling institutions names in the search bar, adding the ability to request new connection when no results are found, and updates to our internal architecture to accommodate future projects designed to provide you greater visibility into all of your connections.
And as the landscape for screen-scraping industry-wide has changed we’ve been hard at work updating our existing parsers when and where institutions have made security updates like adding multi-factor credentials and updated their own client portals. Their work is never-ending and we’re grateful to have such a dedicated team responding to these changes.
It important that you and your client’s know that we will never sell your data. It belongs to you. This has always been our policy but as consumers globally are becoming more aware of how and to whom their data is being shared we think it’s more important than ever to reaffirm this core tenet of eMoney.
Too many other companies are selling your clients data to advertisers or using it to contact you and them with their own complimentary services.
This is our promise and you can hold us to it.
We’ve created a wide variety of materials to help introduce and explain connections to your clients and will continue to create more resources as the conversation around data aggregation evolves. In fact, if you’re consistently needing to explain a certain feature or process to your clients about aggregation than let us know!
In the meantime, check out The Knowledge Base inside your eMoney application for guides, videos, and how-to’s and keep reading for some of the resources available on the eMoney Blog.
Advisor Materials
Here you can find education blog posts, guides, videos, and webinars to help you understand and communicate around Connections with your clients.
Client Connection Guides
The client slicks and guides are designed to help your clients understand, set up, and troubleshoot connections on the Client Portal.
Questions? Give us a call at 888-362-8482 or send us an email.
