Merrill Lynch Benefits Status (benefits.ml.com)
Does anyone happen to know what the current status is for benefits.ml.com? All of my retirement accounts are here (401k, HSA, Equity, etc). More detailed retirement planning is the main reason I decided to give Quicken Premier a try yet no where is it noted that they don't support such a large financial institution. And looks like they just close posts without follow ups.
It seems like they're having issues with investment accounts for some reason. I also connect to benefits.bankofamerica.com for my HSA & FSA. Quicken allows me to connect but only pulls in my HSA savings acct, and not my HSA investment acct.
Support has been no help. They keep telling me to use ml.com, which is a different service & login. I don't have an account at ml.com so I can't log in there. They just don't seem to get it. They told me to call ML, which I did, and they said that it's an issue on the Quicken side. Them I believe as the other software I'm using (Simplifi, [Removed - 3rd Party Software], Mint) all connect without an issue, to both sites mentioned above. (yes, trying them all because of Mint closing and not sure where I want to land yet lol). I searched under known issues and this isn't listed. Support said it's not an issue and refused to open it as one.
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Anyone happen to know about this one?
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Hello @WolfieH3,
Do you have the ticket number(s) given to you during your Quicken Support interactions? This is so I may investigate the issue further.
Thanks!
-Quicken Jasmine
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I was not given a ticket number by any of the support folks I've spoken with unfortunately. @Quicken Jasmine
Looks like someone removed the Benefits Online (benefits.ml.com) from your account listing. Does this mean that Quicken no longer supports connecting to Bank of America 401k, HSA, FSA, Equity & LT accounts? Seems odd since Simplifi does and as Bank of America is such a large financial institution?
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Looking at the current financial institution list:
It seems that benefits.ml.com is Web Connect/QFX file download only:
10779 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
That means you have to go to their site and download the Web Connect/QFX file and import that into Quicken.
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P.S. I just realized that Merril Lynch is where my wife's 401K is too, and as long as she has been employed, they have only ever supported Web Connect/QFX (never Direct Connect). So, this isn't a recent change.
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@Chris_QPW so I found posts from other users that they are connected, though connected awhile back. Also, I found an open issue post (just resolved today) stating they were blocking all investment accounts from ML due to a Quicken issue. Now I still can’t add the account but they’d need to add that back as an option to even try.
there’s a link in that post to the issue they were tracking around it. So there are people connected to benefits.ml.com out there
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Tired of getting the runaround from Support. They keep saying it's a ML issue but sounds like the below KNOWN ISSUE was not on their radar.
@Quicken Anja I still can't connect to benefits.ml.com. Can you please help?
@davidjerry is your connection to benefits.ml.com working?
@jeffery.shaw read your post, how are you managing yours benefits.ml.com accounts now, where did you land on this?
@relocatedbear @borq79 @bacarter213 @jrouault @jludwig47 Have any of you had any success in connecting? If not, how are you managing these accounts?
@BShep Saw your post about adding them via Fidelity Tools but not sure what this means, how I can replicate. Do you mean that Fidelity let's you add external accounts and then you add Fidelity to Quicken to pull them in?
@jab6164 Looks like you used to be able to connect to benefits.ml.com back in 2020. Is this still connected for you?
@Boatnmaniac @Tom Young - you both seem the most knowledgeable on other posts about this, though you were both pointing to the fact that DC was missing from the inventory file. But the above post talks about Quicken blocking all investment accounts due to their screenscaping issue, so thinking they removed the DC connection possibly. To me this would actually make sense because when I add my myhealth.bankofamerica.com account, it adds my HSA savings account, but not my HSA investment account.
Any help or thoughts are appreciated. This app has me wanting to run for the hills and I've been working in IT for 25+ years. Can't image how a non-technical person feels after trying to sort through setting this up, especially with support lacking in both information and professionalism. So exhausted dealing with support folks who just make things up because they don't know something.
[Merged Post]
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I have never been so lucky, I think it might also have to do with the employer paying for the service.
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Don’t think that’s it. Employer is Bank of America which owns Merrill Lynch. Also they connect fine in Simplifi, Mint and [Removed - 3rd Party Software]. And bankofamerica.com, merrilledge.com, MyHealth.bankofamerica.com and ml.com all connect. Based on the above post by Quicken Support, they purposefully turned off connectivity for all investments due to a bug on the Quicken side.
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You have to understand that none of those other financial institutions use the same connection method as Quicken does.
Quicken uses Direct Connect which is Intuit's variation on the OFX protocol (note Quicken Inc pays Intuit for the "connection services"). A financial institution has to approve this connection method, and at one time (not sure anymore) even pay Intuit for support for it. And definitely there are financial institutions that have pushed to the employer to pay for or not.
Back in the day, my employers didn't even pay for any connection to Quicken, not even Web Connect/QFX files, and so I entered transactions manually.
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Well thankfully this isn’t back in the day lol. And I’m paying for software that claims to provide easier and more comprehensive investment management which isn’t working. Quicken clearly posted that they purposefully turned off ML investment connectivity due to a bug in their end. Not sure why you’re ignoring that fact?
Oh and everything I listed… they are all one financial institution. Bank of America owns them all.
Could you point me in the direction of where it’s documented that they don’t pay for Direct Connect?As I’ve already mentioned, numerous folks have posted in the community that they have successful connections to benefits.ml.com, I’m not quite sure how your assumption is tracking with that fact. If what you claim is accurate, then no one would be connected.
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For what pertains to your case:
- For you to be able setup a connection to benefits.ml.com it must be listed in the fidir.txt file that Intuit maintains. It isn't currently there and as such nothing you can do will change that until they change it.
- You can use Web Connect/QFX file because it is listed. It is certainly possible that from the time I looked last and now that they had Direct Connect in there and now taken it out. So, I will admit that I can be wrong about it never being in there. But it was never working for my wife's 401K account.
All the rest is FYI.
- Not all people that have 401K accounts at Merrill Lynch can use Direct Connect. This comes up with other financial institutions too. This isn't really any different than some financial institutions make their customers pay for Direct Connect (usually banking) and some don't. And they are blocked during the logging in.
- On the "cost" you have it backwards. I said that Intuit definitely used to charge financial institutions for this support, but I don't know what the current status of that is. Quicken Inc hasn't state that one way or another. They have stated that Intuit doesn't charge for Express Web Connect or Express Web Connect +.
- You can't point at different aggregators and say because that because one supports something, that magically the others can too. In fact, one might say Express Web Connect + is the financial institutions getting fed up with this. To Quicken users, they tend to think that it is the "One that has to be supported because it is the biggest" and that if they have a problem, the financial institutions will jump over themselves to fix it. But that isn't the case. Quicken is a small percentage of any given financial institution's customers, and they also have multiple aggregators all wanting to get at the same data, and no one had even agreed and a proper protocol for this. Direct Connect/OFX was to be that, but the financial institutions didn't all adopt it. So, now after all these years they are trying again. The new protocol from the aggregators to the financial institutions is called FDX, which is the tail end of what Quicken Inc calls Express Web Connect +. The big difference between Direct Connect/OFX and FDX is that now there will always be an aggregator in between. That isn't a good thing in my opinion, but it is what it is.
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For what pertains to my case:
- I agree. Intuit needs to correct this since it is available. I confirmed this yesterday with the BofA tech team that manages the application. This is an issue on the Quicken side. Direct Connect is set up and available for Quicken to utilize.
- This has been known for quite some time and shared over multiple posts. The fact that other BofA employees have successfully connected in the past would tell is that yes, you are wrong.
Some FYI's for you:
- The benefits.ml.com tech team confirmed that ALL users of the benefits.ml.com are able to utilize the Direct Connect connection. They do not have any rule tied to accessibility/usability of this feature. They also do not charge customers directly for Direct Connect. This is functionality inherently available to everyone with an account.
- As mentioned, BofA tech confirmed that Direct Connect is fully functional and available for Quicken to utilize. There are no outstanding issues on the BofA side, though they did confirm that this is a known issue on the Quicken side.
As I've mentioned above, Quicken has confirmed that they purposefully turned off the ability to download investment accounts due to a bug on the Quicken side. They more than likely removed DC from the fidir.txt file as part of this. You can see this impact on myhealth.bankofamerica.com as well. It connects just fine, but you can only link to the HSA savings account but are blocked from linking to the HSA investment account. This makes sense based on their post. As all accounts at benefits.ml.com are investment type accounts, that entire connection was removed. And at myhealth.bankofamerica.com, just the investment account was blocked.
Here is the original post about the issue:
And here is the Community Alert Quicken opened stating the above:
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@Quicken Anja I'm still not able to connect to benefits.ml.com, though you marked the Community Alert above as resolved. Can you please help?
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Hello @WolfieH3,
Both the discussion and the alert you are referencing are talking about Quicken for Mac (QMac). The connection that was being blocked was Quicken Connect. You are posting in the Quicken for Windows (QWin) section of the Community. Are you encountering this issue in QMac, or in QWin?
In QWin, there is no Merrill Lynch Benefits option. Merrill Lynch - Investments (on the QWin side) defaults to Direct Connect, but also allows Web Connect (downloading a .QFX file from the financial institution and importing it into Quicken).
You mentioned in one of your earlier posts that you've spoken with BoA/Merrill Lynch. Did they indicate which connection you should be using? If they indicated that the Merrill Lynch - Investments connection should work, did they provide any additional information? I know some financial institutions require you to go through an authorization process on their website before it will let you connect via Direct Connect in Quicken.
Thank you.
Quicken Kristina
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I just found this searching through Quicken Windows threads for this, but the connection that this person mentions doesn't exist in the Quicken Windows fidir.txt file.
Note going through "Merrill Lynch Investments" will definitely not work.
EDIT: and there is a list for "Merrill Lynch Retirement Group" which is www.benefits.ml.com, but it is for Web Connect only.
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@WolfieH3 said "They do not have any rule tied to accessibility/usability of this feature. They also do not charge customers directly for Direct Connect. This is functionality inherently available to everyone with an account."
Thanks for the information. I would be really nice if I could use Direct Connect in the future.
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@Chris_QPW There doesn't seem to be a block option in this Community so I'll just ask that you refrain from replying to my posts. Thank you.
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QWin. I'm looking to connect to the same institution as the OP mentioned in the QMac post above. BofA Tech confirmed Direct Connect is set up and available for Quicken to utilize and that this is a known issue on the Quicken side.
Note that you list the FI as a "Connected Account" option but then when you select it, it redirects you to add a manual offline Brokerage account. So I can't even get to the step where I'm redirected to the site to log in (this occurred just fine with the other bofa/ML accounts I've added).
Note that benefits.ml.com is different than ml.com. ml.com is for standard investment accounts, while benefits.ml.com is for employer directed accounts like 401k, Equity & LT Cash, LPFSA, etc, They are considered two separate FI's from a connectivity perspective. Side note: I do have another account added with ml.com, an IRA, and there are no issues there. It connects successfully and loads the single account I have with them.
One other thing to note is that for another BofA account, myhealth.bankofamerica.com, it connects just fine, but it will only allow me to download the HSA cash account. The HSA investment account won't download. So the issue seems to be Investment related, and across multiple accounts. That's what made me believe this issue and the Alert posted were related. If all investment connections were turned off while you worked on that bug, that would fit this scenario.
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Here are the accounts I have with BofA/ML:
- Bank of America (www.bankofamerica.com) - checking, savings, credit card
- Merrill Lynch Investments (www.ml.com) - my IRA account
- Bank of America Health Accounts (myhealth.bankofamerica.com) - HSA cash account, HSA investment account, FSA
- Benefits OnLine (benefits.ml.com) - BofA 401k, BofA Equity & LT Cash Plans, BofA LPFSA, BofA Individual Investor Account
And here's how the connections have been:
- Works fine
- Works fine
- Pulls in my cash account, won't show/let me add the investment account
- Can't even get to a login screen
Here are screenshots for #2-4 of how they pull into Simplifi, just in case this helps at all (yes, I know Simplifi has different connectivity, just wanted to show how they pull in when they do connect):
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Thank you for your replies,
The financial institution the OP mentioned in the post you linked earlier is in QMac (Quicken Connect only), but is not in QWin. The screenshot below is from QMac.
Just like QWin, the Merrill Lynch Retirement Group connection is the only one that shows the benefits.ml.com URL and it is Web Connect only. QWin isn't as user friendly, since it just sends you to the manual account screen rather than telling you Web Connect is the only supported connection for Merrill Lynch Retirement Group.
Since you verified that the Merrill Lynch - Investments connection doesn't work for the benefits account in QWin, have you been able to add/import the account using Web Connect?
The issue with Merrill Lynch Benefits Online not appearing in QWin has been reported to our Development and Product teams for further investigation and resolution. Though we do not currently have an ETA, once a solution is created it will be made available as part of a future release.
Thank you!
(CTP-8407)
Quicken Kristina
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