First of all, a disclaimer for the hardcore financial analysts – this post is purely from a consumer perspective; I make no pretense of knowing about the complex inner workings of the financial services industry. That being said, the inner workings is exactly the problem.  The byzantine and misunderstood rules that govern the financial services industry have led to an entire industry built around helping people manage their money. In fact, our ability to actually control and manage our own money has been in a downward spiral ever since people decided to stop storing money under mattresses.  Seems to me like another opportunity for technology to disintermediate those businesses making money off imperfect information.

Here’s my ideal 2.0 banking environment:  I envision a unified single-sign-on financial management space that spans all of my financial interests so I could easily move funds—across different banks and institutions—from my checking account to my line of credit, or Visa, or RRSPs, or investments, or mortgage. Picture a Web portal that aggregates data from all of my financial accounts in a single dashboard.  The “smart” interface would highlight opportunities for me to save money by using different investment vehicles or compare different promotions being offered. More than just making recommendations, the authenticated system would actually facilitate these transactions via a single click.  I would also get dynamic results on how my actions are affecting my lending rate, monthly payments, and tax return in real time.

I would be able to link my pay, expenses, charitable donations, and other information into this system. From here, the system would let me simply hit a button, and BAM, the unified financial management system automatically files my taxes and prints me a receipt. That would be magic.

If you think this utopian vision is too far-fetched, consider solutions like Jwaala.com. The company is taking some early steps towards enabling this type of functionality at banks with products like personal money manager, budgeting and reporting tools, account aggregation, and dashboards and widgets.