Bank of America - Wealth Management downloads

ljl

Bank of America - Wealth Management, as well as several other banks based on postings here, has stopped permitting downloads using Quicken Connect. What are the underlying security issues that Quicken has failed to address causing these banks to drop Direct Connect and disallow Quicken Connect?

jacobs

It may not be a security issue; it can be as simple as the financial institution choosing not to pay the annual fee to Intuit (which handles connectivity for Quicken), or not wanting to have its staff deal with support issues connected to Quicken.

The first thing I suggest trying to find out is if BoA Wealth Management has made a policy decision not to support Quicken, versus there being a connectivity issue which has not yet been resolved.

ljl

I am told that it was a policy issue related to security.

jacobs

Since Quicken connects to more then 10,000 financial institutions, and is regularly making updates to comply wit bank security protocol changes, there doesn't seem to be a broad-based security concern with Quicken. I notice you said Quicken Connect; for investment accounts, Quicken generally uses Direct Connect. Perhaps they don't want to pay the higher fee to Intuit for Direct Connect? Or run the server(s) needed for Direct Connect? Or, for security, they don't want any third-party application connecting to their servers to download transactions? If you feel like perusing it, I'd say to connect BoA Wealth Management again and try to talk to someone with knowledge of Quicken to find out more specifically why they have chosen not to supporting it when so many other investment brokerage companies are. Sometimes, inquiries and pressure from customers has been seen to influence which companies support Quicken.

BK

I recently spoke to a bank CTO friend who said their smaller than 0.1% community of Quicken users generate about 7% of their support calls, most of whom cannot even properly describe their issue.  As such they are considering dropping Quicken support in order to better focus their time and money on their core business.  So this appears to be more of a financial business decision, and I am sure investing in security adds to that as well.  I too did experience one financial institution account that completely discontinued all consumer-level application support in Jan 2020. Another one is planning to require use of a physical FIDO-2 key for any online transactions by year end and [guessing] leading to login access in a future phase.

ljl

Thanks to both of you!

jacobs

BK said:

I recently spoke to a bank CTO friend who said their smaller than 0.1% community of Quicken users generate about 7% of their support calls, most of whom cannot even properly describe their issue.  As such they are considering dropping Quicken support in order to better focus their time and money on their core business. 

@BK  Thanks for sharing that interaction you had. I suspect this is true at many financial institutions: Quicken users constitute a small percentage of their customer base, but the security, special servers/software, and support — plus the fees Intuit charges for the "privilege" of working with Quicken — all making support of Quicken for the minority of its customers less than a slam dunk to support Quicken.

Years ago, Quicken was way ahead of the curve in providing software for people looking to manage their finances. But nowadays, many banks and brokerages offer a variety of tools on their own websites to help customers with online banking and investing, and those financial institutions may feel their money is better spent improving their own systems for their entire customer base rather than supporting Quicken. I wouldn't be surprised to see more financial institutions end support of Quicken. 

Ps56k2

ljl said: Bank of America - Wealth Management...

not sure what's entered on the MAC side, but this is from the Windows side.

10546    10546    10546    Bank of America-Wealth Management    https://www.ustrustonline.com    (888) 566-1000    https://www.ustrustonline.com    ACTIVE        
INVESTMENT&WEB-CONNECT        
INVESTMENT&EXP-WEB-CONNECT   

And... as mentioned... no stones throwing at Quicken - it's a business that offers a service, and it is up to each and every financial company to contract with and pay for Quicken services - if they don't, then no online features are avail

Mark1104

I often wonder what the average age of a Quicken user is..... i see a lot of posts (mine included) where users have Q files over 20 years old.  The financial services world has changed dramatically in 20-25 years (online banking is a norm, use of smartphones to do banking is a norm, many do not use PC's anymore, brokerage firms legally required to report cost basis on sales to the IRS, etc.), I just wonder if Quicken is a 'dinosaur' product that after our generation passes on, usage of Q may fall.  

ljl

@Jacobs said: Years ago, Quicken was way ahead of the curve in providing software for people looking to manage their finances. But nowadays, many banks and brokerages offer a variety of tools on their own websites to help customers with online banking and investing, and those financial institutions may feel their money is better spent improving their own systems for their entire customer base rather than supporting Quicken. I wouldn't be surprised to see more financial institutions end support of Quicken.


I'd be interested in knowing any banks that offer a full suite of bookkeeping software services comparable to Quicken, including Budgeting. My experience with Wells Fargo customer service on most matters throughout the past decade+ has been poor; however, they do allow Quicken Connect. On the other hand, my experience with Quicken support has been very good. I'm just disappointed that BoA has made this decision to permit only 'web connect', which is cumbersome for multiple accounts.

BK

ljl said:

I'm just disappointed that BoA has made this decision to permit only 'web connect', which is cumbersome for multiple accounts.

I just want to clarify between BofA vs. their Wealth Management:

* BofA still permits all three connection types: Direct Connect, Express Web Connect/Quicken Connect, Web Connect with one caveat: Direct Connect (DC) is only available to long time Quicken customers who way back then signed up for it in Quicken and got grand fathered in.  e.g. I am a long time BofA customer but didn't start using Quicken till about 2010, so I am NOT qualified to get DC access.  But I still use Express Web Connect (EWC, which is same as Quicken Connect on the Mac side) without any issues.

* Their Wealth Management might be a different story but according to what @Ps56k2 wrote above EWC (hence Quicken Connect) may still be a valid connection type? and if not Quicken needs to make revisions based on your recent posted discovery - which is unfortunate.

Just FYI here is the info on connection types: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-bank

I personally am fully prepared that Quicken will not be a viable product a decade from now unfortunately.

jacobs

Mark1104 said:

I often wonder what the average age of a Quicken user is..... i see a lot of posts (mine included) where users have Q files over 20 years old.  The financial services world has changed dramatically in 20-25 years (online banking is a norm, use of smartphones to do banking is a norm, many do not use PC's anymore, brokerage firms legally required to report cost basis on sales to the IRS, etc.), I just wonder if Quicken is a 'dinosaur' product that after our generation passes on, usage of Q may fall.  

Yes, Quicken is in many ways a dinosaur, with many very long-time users, like me, who hope to cling to it throughout our lifetime of managing our personal finances. Some younger people will discover and adopt Quicken as they grow into needing a tool to compile their financial information and history from across multiple institutions — but many won't because they approach their financial data differently.

I still have a file cabinet where I store my printed bills, credit card receipts and statements, bank statements, etc. for as long as they are needed. But many people have moved to the simplicity of paying bills and reconciling statements online, and keep no printed trail, or keep PDF copies of some documents and rely on their financial institutions to maintain their history (even though many only keep 12 or 18 months on file).

For these reasons, Quicken spent the time and money to build their new product, Simplifi, to target (younger) users who want to do everything online. They're competing against older products like Mint by trying to hit a sweet spot of ease of an online-only, use-anywhere product which provides more depth in collecting financial data. Perhaps some day, Quicken all decide to end the desktop product, and provide a way to merge Quicken data into Simplifi -- but company executives have said that's not their long-term plan; I'd say it's not likely to happen for many years, if ever. 

ljl said:

I'd be interested in knowing any banks that offer a full suite of bookkeeping software services comparable to Quicken, including Budgeting.

No, I don't think any bank or brokerage offers the same breadth of functionality as Quicken. For people who have always used Quicken as basically an electronic checkbook, though, a bank may now offer all they need. Or for people with one investment account, their investment institution may offer all they need. Quicken excels at serving people who have a mix of financial accounts from multiple institutions, who value being able to pull all their financial information together under one roof. Quicken is not obsolete; it serves a very definite purpose for a certain portion of the market.