It seems the wind appears to be blowing toward the investment management sector at Envestment-owned firm Yodlee.
Yodlee, a leading data aggregation and data analytics platform, took a step toward the investment sector today with the announcement of a strategic partnership with Vanguard, one of the largest investment management companies in the world. The partnership could alter the data aggregation landscape, and leave more territory to Finicity, a Yodlee competitor in the API and data-aggregation space.
This seeming move away from the fintech sector comes two weeks after Intuit, another competitor, announced it was leaving the data API market to Yodlee and Finicity. (Intuit chose Finicity to transition its API users from Intuit, Finicity said today.)
No doubt Yodlee still has plenty of fintech clients. Indeed, Yodlee emphasized to Bank Innovation that “Envestnet | Yodlee continues in its unwavering commitment to our core customers in fintech helping both financial institutions and innovative Internet companies in their quest to drive innovation across retail banking, small business banking, payments, credit risk, wealth management and more.”
But Yodlee’s parent company Envestnet is an investment firm, and logic dictates that it sees significant opportunities on Wall Street. Of this new partnership, Bill Parsons, general manager of products and senior vice president of Americas at Yodlee, had the following to say:
We’re honored to partner with a leading investment management pioneer that offered the world’s first index mutual fund to individual investors…We are excited to provide these Vanguard clients a secure way to access their external accounts via the [Yodlee] Platform. …
Yodlee’s personal financial management history makes it a fit for managing investment data. Vanguard Managing Director Karin Risi stressed the pragmatic side of data management, reiterating the customer-centric theme that’s seen steady growth in the fintech sector.
For our clients, simplicity is key… Our partnership with [Yodlee] provides our Personal Advisor Services clients with a powerful platform to access a comprehensive picture of all of their accounts to help them achieve investment success.