Why Can't I Connect to Merrill Lynch Benefits Online?

jeffery.shaw

:/ I'm trying to add my retirement account from Merrill Lynch (www.benefits.ml.com) and when I select the financial institution listed for that URL, I'm taken to the offline brokerage wizard. I don't want an offline account, I want to connect to my account online.

The entry in the "Search for your financial institution" search results is "Merrill Lynch Retirement Group". I see another closed entry for this issue but it seems like it's still unresolved. :/

Boatnmaniac

In order for a FI (financial institution) to be able to download into Quicken they must be included in the FIDIR.txt file (FI Directory list) and it must show they support the correct connection method(s) for the types of accounts they have. 

In the FIDIR I found the following:

10779    10779    Merrill Lynch Retirement Group    https://www.benefits.ml.com    NA    https://www.benefits.ml.com/login/login.aspx    ACTIVE         401K&WEB-CONNECT              NOT_QBP    NA

It shows Merrill Lynch supports Web Connect (WC) which is the connection method whereby one logs into their online account with that FI, then manually downloads the transactions/account data in QFX (or "Quicken") format from there and then manually imports that downloaded file into Quicken.

It is my understanding, however, that WC does not support downloading of investment/retirement accounts data.  Instead, Direct Connect (DC) is needed but DC is not included for this FIDIR listing.

You could check your online account at Merrill Lynch to see if it permits downloading in QFX format.  If it does you can try that and see if it will set up your account in Quicken.  Otherwise you will need to set up and manage this 401K plan in Quicken manually.

If you wish to have Merrill Lynch add support for DC you will need to contact Merrill Lynch and request them to contract with Quicken (and Intuit which is Quicken's aggregator) to do that.  If Merrill Lynch gets enough requests from customers then perhaps they can develop the business case (it will cost them) to add support for it at some point.

If your 401K is one from another employer and Merrill Lynch is simply administering it for that employer, you will probably need to contact the Plan Administrator at the employer to make this request.  The Plan Administrator will likely need to modify the contract they have with Merrill Lynch to get this support added.