All you need to know about account aggregators!

1. All you need to know about account aggregators!

2. Account aggregators have become extremely popular over the recent years with the rise of services like Mint and Personal Capital. Even though the demand and popularity for the aggregators is rapidly increasing, it is still not common knowledge! Read on to know about account aggregators and stay up-to-date.

3. What is an account aggregator? • Account aggregation or financial data aggregation is a process whereby data from multiple or all financial accounts for a person or household is collected in one place. In terms of online banking, the user can receive a service by selecting a home page where account holders can view information on all of their checking, savings, CD, and brokerage accounts. Personal finance software, applications, and online services such as Quicken or Mint provide such account aggregation services and are therefore called account aggregators.

4. How does an account aggregation work? • Account aggregation generally occurs only within a single financial institution, but certain assets held by the user outside of a financial institution can be included if the account holder has agreed to it. Personal finance services offer clients the option to "aggregate" details of all their savings, checking accounts, brokerage accounts, as well as other financial assets in all institutions with which users have their accounts. These services generally require you to provide your account credentials (username and password) if you want to use the facility. With the information provided, the download data for each account to be included in the aggregation. Often times, tink account aggregation software can only access balance information and transaction records. Also, for security reasons, many aggregation services do not allow users to transact from the aggregation portal. • In addition to the aforementioned services, some software, often used by professional financial advisers on behalf of their clients, collect additional data on net worth, such as recent estimates of home value, classify cash inflows and outflows, and income liabilities. debt in the financial sector. picture.

5. Benefits of account aggregation • General Description: The main use is to obtain an overview of the financial situation of the company or individual. It's the "clutter-free desktop" that keeps you up-to-date and in control. • Planning - Bank account aggregatorcan be used as a financial management and planning tool by providing streamlined access to accounts for account holders, especially families with multiple financial goals. • Usage Patterns - Helps keep track of our own patterns. Used to track customer patterns, it quickly detects defaults and delivers personalized offers that capture their attention and build customer loyalty. • In real time: it is constantly updated, offering new updates on demand, which is humanly impossible to do at the fast speed that the aggregator does. • Process automation: it's easy to forget to enter data (a new transfer), make a mistake when making an account balance, etc. The process automation offered by this type of API minimizes mistakes and oversights that anyone could make, simplifying financial control.

6. Problems faced by users • Mechanical difficulties: since many institutions are not compatible with aggregators, they are forced to "scrape" the information in a robotic way. This involves a computer program visiting a bank's website, logging in with a customer's credentials, and then reading the code to automatically extract information such as account balances.

7. Prone to Hacking - Banks have had trouble identifying the difference between account aggregator India logging into an account multiple times and often mistaking it for hackers so the latter can easily get through. This can even damage customer relationships FOR financial data Aggregator, as consumers can face account lockouts if there have been too many unsuccessful attempts to sign in. • Fight between banks and aggregators: Some large banks have completely banned account aggregators from accessing their website by blocking the IP address of an account aggregator software. Consumers are caught in the middle of this fight as they may view inaccurate data or they may not be able to access their financial data at all. • The need at the moment is to develop an application programming interface (API) designed to handle requests for data from account aggregators. By routing account aggregation requests to an API instead of a website, slowdowns and the risk of exposing login credentials can be avoided.

8. About Us • CAMSfinserv is a technology driven financial infrastructure and services provider to Mutual Funds and other financial institutions for over two decades.  As the market leading Registrar and Transfer Agency to the Indian Mutual Fund industry, CAMS serves ~ 70%* of the average assets under management - as of December 2020. We also provide technology enabled service solutions to Alternative Investment Funds and Insurance Companies. Besides serving as a B2B service partner, CAMS also serves customers through a variety of touch points such as pan-India network of service centres, white label call centre, online, mobile app and chatbot. • Website - https://www.camsfinserv.com/