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Health apps and monitors are hot right now. My Android phone can count my steps and encourage me to get more exercise. Fitness bands abound from numerous consumer brands. The Motorola Moto watch and Apple watch both include health tracking capabilities.
Consumers seem to be buying into the idea that these devices can help improve their physical health, so why not create similar mobile capabilities to track financial health?
Many financial planning software firms offer software that is capable of helping consumers evaluate and monitor their financial wellness. Oleg Tishkevich, formerly CEO of Finance Logix and now CTO of financial planning at Envestnet, after the latter acquired the technology company, recently previewed his new Financial Health app for me. Even though it was still a beta version, I found the concept quite intriguing.
The underlying premise: Even with all the advances in financial technology over the past several years, many people still have trouble handling personal money issues. Part of the problem is a lack of financial education, but part of it is also behavioral.
There is also a widely held notion that financial planning is a difficult, painful process. By adopting the financial health construct, Finance Logix just might be able to make planning more engaging to a broader spectrum of the American public.
According to Tishkevich, the Financial Health app is designed with some very specific tasks in mind: helping clients connect with their advisor, allowing clients to see account information, asset allocation and transactions, and letting them view and track progress toward their financial goals.
USER SETUP
Once an advisor has offered the app to clients, the first step is to log into the app — via an iPhone’s native biometric login, or through two-factor authentication (adding, say, a PIN) or other options.
If you are a new client logging in for the first time, and you have not yet set up account aggregation, you will be invited to aggregate your accounts. Most big financial institutions are listed prominently, so users can select their institution and enter their credentials; the Finance Logix aggregation, powered by CashEdge, will collect the relevant data.
If clients don’t see their financial institution listed, they can enter the name in a search box and it will most...