Fiserv enters the portal, aggregation fray

BROOKFIELD, Wis. - The portal business in credit union land has so far been dominated by small start-ups, but that's about to change. Fiserv President/CEO Les Muma said the company is close to signing a deal to bring a fully customizable portal product to credit unions. But while that deal is not yet done, its financial aggregation deal is. Fiserv has partnered with Vertical One, an S1 subsidiary, to offer its clients a financial aggregation solution. Financial aggregation is the cat's meow right now in the banking industry with Chase, Fleet Bank, and Citigroup planning to offer the service. At press time, brokerage powerhouse Merrill Lynch announced that it will soon begin offering Yodlee.com's aggregation service. Online brokers entering the aggregation arena can be particularly troublesome for CUs given that online brokerage solutions have turned out to be the Web-based financial solution consumers have embraced the most, more than Net banking and bill payment. Members of Fiserv CU clients will be able to gain single log-in access to all of their financial relationships. Right now Fiserv's product will utilize screen scraping to pool financial data. Muma said within 30 to 60 days Fiserv clients will be able to start offering the portal product with the aggregation feature already built-in. "We've been getting a lot of interest from our financials. They know this is something they have to get into," said Muma. "We want our credit unions to have that sticky site that their members will flag as their home page. It's important strategically," said Muma. The VerticalOne deal is the latest in a flurry of moves Fiserv has made to bring a one-stop-shop portal product to the market. Past moves include using Ignite Safe's financial planning tools and MaxRate.com's online reverse auctions of CDs. Fiserv is also looking for a telecommunications firm to partner with for ISP service, said Muma. While big banks are headed down the aggregation road, the appeal of aggregation services is in question because the information is static-consumers can not make transactions. Muma said the ability to start moving money between different financial providers from one site is at least a year away. Interestingly, while many of the credit union portal providers have proved innovative, including offering members ISP service, aggregation has not yet become a CU portal offering. A number of large credit unions, The Golden 1 and Boeing Employees CU to name a few, have said they hope to start offering aggregation services later this year. Yodlee.com and VerticalOne are currently the leading aggregation solution providers. -pgentile@cutimes.com