Schwab Conversion - Just curious about speed of the transaction updates

Question

I've never timed this before, but since the switchover, my updates seem to take longer. Does anyone else see this? Possibly just my own system. And, if it is slower, that might be the way it is for better security.

MrZipp · Answer

Thank you for your complete answer. I download 7 Schwab accounts including Schwab Bank and 11 others. Too bad it is going to be this way, unless someone can make Webconnect faster. Again, I don't have any real times to go by, just a sense that the process is say, for me, about 50% slower. I'm quite happy that I got through the problems with the conversion (I think), and am okay with the speed. Just curious.

Been a Quicken user since the mid 1990s, and keep a lot of data.

Again, thanks!

Chris_QPW · Answer

Actually, when I think of it there is a chance of a speed up, but at the cost of being "much slower".

The original flow of Express Web Connect said that the Intuit servers would download transactions once a day, and cache them on their server for Quicken to retrieve them.  If this was the case and the Intuit servers were somehow faster than getting the data directly from the financial institution, then maybe it would be faster.  The "much slower" part would be that there would be up to a one day delay it getting your transactions.  As in if the Intuit servers downloaded the transactions at 1AM and new transactions posted at 2AM it wouldn't be till the next day you would see those new transactions, even if the One Step Update is "faster".

What reminded me of this is the fact that in another thread that is exactly what a person is described for the new connection to Charles Schwab.

Combined that with your observation that it is in fact slower to do Express Web Connect + than it was for Direct Connect, it looks like you ended up with a negative in both areas.

There is one possible future change that might make a difference.
I have noticed that for whatever reason they can't do Direct Connect in parallel, but they can do Express Web Connect in parallel.  If they can do multiple connections in parallel than the overall process might be faster.  Since it isn't mentioned here can I assume that the bank accounts using Express Web Connect aren't running in parallel with Express Web Connect +/Charles Scwhab?

Chris_QPW · Answer

I have never seen anybody claim that this is going to speed up anything and I would expect it to slow things down.

The claim by Charles Schwab is this was done for security.  In reality I think most people see it as the making it easier on themselves to consolidate different aggregators and to make it less expensive.

First off even though we know nothing about the API that they are now using we do know that whereas it used to be Quicken talking directly to the financial institutions ofx server it is now going through a Quicken server and Intuit server and then the financial institution.  That's certainly not a recipe for speeding things up.

At best case I would say you would be looking at equal, but certainly not faster and pretty much likely slower.