Intuit Archives - Page 12 of 12

Digital Insight Now Officially Part of Intuit

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 8, 2007
Categories: Bill payment, Intuit, Personal Financial Management, Small Business

Intuit's $1.3 billion acquisition of Digital Insight closed yesterday, marking the beginning of a new era of innovation in small business online banking (previous coverage here). It's a market that's been underserved for years (see Online Banking Report's, Small- and Microbusiness Online Banking, #107/108).

Intuit, which has iPod-like domination of small business accounting and bookkeeping via Quicken and QuickBooks, can now leverage the software relationship into the banking relationship. The bloggers at Intuit's QuickBooks team-blog expanded on that theme here, discussing their goal of integrating electronic invoicing and payments into the bank site:

Why the purchase? One reason is to try to sell functionality of our record-keeping software as a service through banks, letting small businesses create, send, and get paid for invoices, all online at a bank's site. With millions of QuickBooks customers, we think we have some insight into small business' needs…. We learned from our tax return business how quickly packaged software can move to a Web service. Last year, for the first time, more people used the online version of our Turbo Tax Web service than the desktop version.

This is not necessarily bad for financial institutions. In fact, it probably levels the playing field for the smaller banks and credit unions that are the core of the DI client base. Through integration into Intuit's accounting products, smaller banks will be able to offer sophisticated small business solutions that equal or surpass what Bank of America or Wells Fargo offers today.

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Intuit’s Billion-Dollar Online Banking Play

By Jim Bruene Posted on December 2, 2006
Categories: Intuit, Personal Financial Management, Small Business

Intuit merger graphic on its fi.intuit.com website Intuit's bold move to purchase online banking pioneer Digital Insight came as a surprise, both to analysts and shareholders. Reactions were mixed, with shares drifting downward after the 8 AM EST announcement Thursday, ending the week off 3% (see chart here; Intuit presentation on the acquisition here).

Although the software developer has made a few forays into selling bank technology, including owning a bill payment processor in the mid-90s, it has generally stayed focused on packaged software for consumers and small businesses.

Just two weeks ago, I met with Intuit execs at the coming out party for its financial institution services unit at the China Grill down the hall from BAI's Retail Delivery Conference in Las Vegas. They were excited about several new services built on the Teknowledge unit purchased last year (see previous post here).

Analysis
Only time will tell whether the acquisition makes sense for Intuit. It's a savvy company that understands the personal finance space as well as anyone, so I tend to believe they know what they are doing.

Regardless of what it does for Intuit's share price, the merger is bound to shake up the online banking product offerings at banks and credit unions, especially for smaller businesses, the Quicken and QuickBooks crowd.

In September, we published a report predicting significant growth in personal finance functionality in online banking services (see Note 1). This merger should further accelerate that growth. As Intuit integrates Quicken, TurboTax, and QuickBooks features into the Digital Insight line, other platform providers will feel pressured to keep up.

This is good news for U.S. consumers who've generally NOT been able to enjoy the benefits of tightly integrated personal finance and online banking.

End Notes:

(1) See Online Banking Report #130/131, Personal Finance Features for Online Banking: Why MySpendingReport Trumps Free Bill Pay

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Bank-Account Switching Tools from Intuit and uSwitch Take Center Stage

By Jim Bruene Posted on November 20, 2006
Categories: Account Switching, BAI Retail Delivery, Intuit, Strategies, uSwitch

"The biggest profit center at banks is customer ignorance, which banks have mistaken for customer loyalty."
— Gary Hamel, speaking to 1,000+ bankers at BAI's Retail Delivery Conference, Nov. 15, 2006

I've always been a sucker for management-guru speakers. I can still remember Tom Peters speaking at a sold-out show in Peoria, Illinois, back when I was a wet-behind-the-ears management-trainee for Caterpillar. It was 20 years ago during the height of "In Search of Excellence" mania and it helped me realize a lot can be done to improve business performance.

So every year I make it a point to sit up front when BAI trots out the guru-du-jour to inspire the banking crowd. This year, it was Gary Hamel, a Harvard guy that, I'm sorry to say, I hadn't heard of prior to Wednesday (see the End Note for a summary of his recommendations presented to the BAI crowd).

But man did he grab my attention with his challenge to the assembled bankers and tech-company reps (see quote above). He believes banks are vulnerable as customers become better equipped to compare the price of various financial services, a natural role of the Internet.

The importance of switching tools
Hamel believes financial services loyalty will disappear once customers discover how easy it is to move their accounts to pick up a hundred basis points on their savings rate, or avoid $35 overdraft fees.

In his BAI presentation, Hamel pointed to U.K.-based uSwitch <uswitch.com> as an example of a new tool to help financial customers compare and switch banking accounts (we'll profile it in an upcoming article).

As Hamel was delivering his keynote, Intuit was busy in a nearby Mandalay Bay eatery briefing analysts on its new account switching service, scheduled to go live December 15. The clever service is built on the Teknowledge aggregation engine acquired last year (data sheet here). Intuit's service is similar to Yodlee's service announced in September (see our coverage here). We'll be covering it in more detail as it goes live.

End Note:

Hamel's management philosophy
I have yet to read Hamel's books, but what he talked about Wednesday could be boiled down to the following:

Employees shouldn't be "managed" they should be "led."
In practice, he'd like to see nearly all management eliminated and replaced by small, self-managed teams working to achieve company goals.
As much as possible, teams would make their own product, pricing, and staffing decisions.
Compensation would be highly dependent on the team's results in achieving the ambitious profit goals set for them by the company.
His examples: Whole Foods, W.L. Gore, and Google.

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Intuit’s RockYourRefund.com Makes Tax Prep (almost) Fun

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 17, 2005
Categories: Intuit, Website Usability & Design

Step 1: It’s tax time
Step 2: Then it’s play time

So starts one of the most interesting financial services websites to come along in a long time. Leave it to Intuit to come up with a way to make submitting your tax return seem almost fun. It’s RockYourRefund.com website is basically a jazzed up portal into TurboTax for the Web, a service that’s been around for more than five years.

Analysis
Sometimes it seems futile trying to make boring financial services interesting. Well if Intuit can do it with tax prep, you can do it with your financial products.

Take a minute to look at it yourself, but the premise is you get a 10% coupon at Best Buy or up to $200 off a trip after you’ve completed your tax return online via the TurboTax website. Cost for the online service is $5.95 for federal plus $9.95 for state tax returns.

Action Item
This approach would work wonderfully with bill payment. Offer coupons and offers that users would receive after paying their bills. A benefit for saving time and money using your super-convenient epayment service. (For more information on how to build a killer bill payment service, see Online Banking Report #80, 81, 82, 86, and an update on the market in #115 published three days ago. )

— JB

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Quicken-izing Your Finance Website

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 7, 2005
Categories: Intuit, Personal Financial Management

Looking for ideas to appeal to the Quicken segment? Personal Mvelopes, an online personal financial management system from In2m Corporation, stitches together account aggregation and bill payment into a $9.95 per month offering.

Analysis
The company has recently attracted some good PR (Kiplinger’s, Boston Globe, BankRate.com) that may translate into some accounts. But unless In2m partners with stronger financial brands, the finance site will struggle to attract paying customers.

Consumers are wary, make that VERY WARY, of online financial services offerings, especially from unknown entities. But if a bank were to license the system and operate it under its own name, it might become moderately successful. (We say moderately, because budgeting is not a mainstream activity, and many of the budget-minded are already locked in to using Quicken or Money.)

If nothing else, the system demonstrates good customer advocacy. The bank could bundle additional services, such as long-term transaction archives, to help justify the $10 per month. Also, bundled revolving credit could boost the business case substantially.

If you’d like to learn more about the how personal finance is penetrating online banking, check out Personal Finance Features for Online Banking: Why “My Spending Report” trumps free bill pay on the subject from our sister publication, the Online Banking Report.

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