Today you can add a free iPhone application to the list of tools Personal Capital provides its investor clients in managing their financial lives.
The most impressive new feature from Personal Capital Corp. is the ability to move money between accounts using the new iPhone application (as well as pay other people, or pay bills).
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View our slideshow of Personal Capital's iPhone application)
Prior to this clients could check account balances, see recent transactions on all their bank, credit card and brokerage accounts and monitor cash flow but not actually transfer funds between accounts.
In addition to these features users can monitor their current income and spending and compare it to prior months as well as track their investments including IRA, 401(k) and 529 accounts.
“Many customers want to see their entire financial lives all in one place and be able to make things happen from that one place to view
and do,” said chief executive Bill Harris in an interview.
“That's why I call our application a remote control for your money,” he said.
When asked for his opinion on how Personal Capital differs from the very popular Mint.com, an inevitable comparison made by most non-advisers and even some advisers, Mr. Harris did not miss a beat.
“Mint is a fabulous piece of software, designed predominantly for people going from pay check to pay check and not necessarily with a long-term focus, more for the budgeter,” he said.
“We are a financial services company, and our biggest differentiator is that we are trying to deliver an end user solution to the fragmentation problem,” Mr. Harris said reiterating the breadth of account types and tools for assessing a user's overall financial picture that his company provides.
He added that this is also a prime differentiator between Personal Capital and the many personal financial management applications available from banks as well — in other words that those applications tend to focus entirely on the client's accounts with that specific bank or are limited to a handful of other types of accounts.
“We are also more focused on longer-term folks and those that are planning for retirement,” he added.
The iPhone launch actually follows the launch of the firm's free iPad application, which became available in Apple Inc.'s App Store on March 14; Personalcapital.com launched it site and services in the fall of 2011.
It should be noted that the ability to move funds is currently limited to only the new iPhone application, this feature will be added “soon” to both the iPad application and the PersonalCapital.com website.
According to Mr. Harris, the firm has grown the amount of assets it tracks for clients to $3 billion since the firm launched last year.
For those in need of a brief refresher, Personal Capital is the free online wealth management service launched for the everyman by Mr. Harris, who is the former chief executive of both PayPal and Intuit Inc. and Rob Foregger, a co-founder of online-banking pioneer EverBank.
Personal Capital also happens to be a registered investment advisory, albeit an online one as opposed to the brick and mortar variety that makes up a significant proportion of our readership here at InvestmentNews.
While it is taking an online approach to reaching its prospects and getting those prospects hooked — first by providing them with a set of free, easy-to-use tools for seeing and managing their different accounts in one place — the firm makes its own revenue by fees charged on assets under management by its human advisers.
In a nutshell, Personal Capital makes it easy to segue from its do-it-yourself online tools into a relationship with one of its advisers.
The firm has provided this service from the start but has been shy up to this point about sharing its number of clients in this category and its current assets under management.
For more information or to download the iPhone application visit
PersonalCapital.com/iPhone online or the iPhone App Store from your device.
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