PortfolioScope, an ASP of private-label portfolio accounting services, and CashEdge, a provider of account aggregation and funds transfer services, have announced a strategic alliance to provide financial advisors with enhanced investment tracking and reporting services.
According to PortfolioScope and CashEdge officials, under terms of the agreement the companies will integrate their services. CashEdge will provide the account aggregation platform and PortfolioScope will provide the application layer for a Web-based ASP-delivered portfolio with tracking and reporting tools.
“This is the second evolution of financial data aggregation,” PortfolioScope’s CEO, James Wangsness, told ASPnews. “The current level of sophistication of analysis is ludicrous. Financial advisors need tools to process data efficiently. The market has underestimated the difficulty of consolidating financial data,” he said pointing to the difference between data aggregation and consolidation.
“People confuse aggregation with consolidation. Aggregation is like an ATM — a snap shot in time,” Wangsness told ASPnews. “We are the checkbook,” referring to PortfolioScope’s capability to provide a complete and accurate financial picture.
To pull in the financial data, PortfolioScope will turn to CashEdge’s aggregation technology, which consolidates not only direct feed data from financial institutions and brokerage firms but also tackles the more difficult task of collecting from checking, savings, credit card, investment, mortgage, overdraft, CD and loan accounts.
“We looked at several other providers and it became clear to us that CashEdge was the only aggregator with technology capable of providing data with transaction level detail that professional grade portfolio analysis requires,” said Wangsness.
“This is not a new concept,” Sanjeev Dheer, CEO of CashEdge, told ASPnews. “Financial institutions have spent millions over years developing aggregation internally. What we have done is leverage the Internet to accomplish it across several sources of data.”
Analyzing and reporting on the data is handled by PortfolioScope’s tools, which creates what Dheer calls “a personal balance sheet.” PortfolioScope’s suite of reports cover performance analysis, asset allocation, transaction detail, and optimized tax lot accounting of unrealized/realized gains and losses. Financial advisors can then use PortfolioScope’s private-label ASP-delivered tools. To the user, the PortfolioScope service is transparent.
CashEdge was founded in November 1999 and has dual headquarters in New York City and Milpitas, Calif. Its client list includes Laurentian Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, The Vanguard Group and Yahoo!Finance.
PortfolioScope was founded in 1983 and has offices in Mountain Lakes, N.J. and Boston, Mass. Its clients include CitiCorp, Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, Deutsche Bank and Bears Stearns & Co.
