Anyone using Fidelity's "Full View" service?

[justin]

Fidelity is offering a service called "Full View".

From their website:
"Use Full View® to create a complete picture of your online financial accounts with a single log in to Fidelity.com.

Get a Consolidated Picture of Your Finances
Full View displays your recent account information from thousands of Web sites, on one page.

You can view:
• Accounts at investment firms
• Bank accounts
• Credit cards
• Airline frequent flyer miles
• E-mail and frequent flyer accounts
There's no fee for Full View."

Anyone used it before? Is it reliable? Are the kinks worked out? I hadn't heard about it before, but it looks pretty useful if you have accounts scattered everywhere. Maybe it has some feature to transfer money from one account at one service provider to another account at a different service provider? This service looks pretty neat, and I may have to give it a try.

I used to use a service at Yahoo Finance called "My Money" or something that consolidated all account views for you in one place just like this, and allowed money to be transferred between any of your accounts in one central location.

I can't get a link to work, but go to Fidelity.com and type "full view" into the search box on the homepage.

 

[OkieTexan]

I would certainly want to be able to trust the company with the userid and password for ALL of my financial accounts with those capabilities!
I believe Yodlee is the company you are referring to. Also, the security features on some accounts can complicate the integration of these programs. My bank recently installed a security feature that requires the answer to 2 questions to access the account. The questions are selected at random from a pool of four; so they are different each time you log in. Yodlee has no choice but to ask you for the answer each time.
I would think very carefully about the "price of convenience" in such a "free" service. The security risk seems enormous!

 

[rs0460a]

I have been using the service since mid-year, and find it to be a valuable tool. It's very easy to update the account status of me/DW's accounts (7 different providers, with a total of 10 different accounts) on a daily basis, and use FV as input to Fidelity's Retirement Income Planner forecast tool (one of 4 that I use).

Remember that you need to have security to get to Fidelity's site, and in turn have security to get to the individual sites that FV accesses.

There was a problem a few months ago, when Vanguard went to a "multi-question" security scheme, but Fidelity/Vanguard/et all finally got it working (note - you need to ensure that the questions on the Fidelity FV site are aligned to Vanguard accounts - there is a difference in the questions, and the amount of questions asked).

Anyway, I think it's great. I don't use it (as some others have stated using Yodlee as the underlying service provider) to track credit card and bank accounts. I use it strictly for management and cross checking of my/DW retirement accounts, and cross check it against Vanguard's Financial Engines and other forecast tools.

I'm using Fidelity for managing all my accounts (through different providers) for their CMA account. Since they are using it to give me reports (and to fund my day-to-day expenses), I believe that they have a "self interest" to make sure that the information they receive (and in turn, provide $$$ management to me) is "proper".

Anyway "that's my story, and I'm sticking to it"

- Ron

 

[LOL!]

For retirement planning and asset allocation determination, I use the Vanguard "Other accounts" stuff.

I have simply entered the number of shares of each of the 30 or so investments that we have. Vanguard does not need to know our account numbers nor passwords. I am not so anal that I need to know the exact share amounts to several decimal places. Since the share amounts in these accounts change only once or twice a year, I can do that manually.

Anyways, for now I do not see the benefit of these aggregators over something like quicken or msmoney. And certainly no benefit that would overcome my concerns about privacy and security.

 

[mathjak107]

i use it all the time.. very helpful. caught an atm error almost immeadiatley as well as a fraudulant credit card transaction within 1 day.

 

[Corporateburnout]

I've been using it for a few months now. I use it primarily to view all my accounts within Fidelity as well as my wife's accounts and bank accounts through BOFA. It updates automatically every few days but you could refresh the accounts manually as well. I have not set up tracking my credit card accounts since I usually check them on their website weekly.

 

[Bob_Smith]

...I would think very carefully about the "price of convenience" in such a "free" service. The security risk seems enormous!

OkieTexan, I have concerns about this too. I used aggregation services at one time, but quit doing so because I couldn't get a solid answer to this question:

If I provide all of my Company A security information to Company B, and my assets at Company A are stolen... under what specific circumstances is the loss absorbed by me, by Company A, and by Company B?

I tried to run that down but could not get consistent information that could be confirmed via other sources.

 

[TromboneAl]

I had my first contact with Fidelity today. My 529 was moved from TIAA-CREF to Fidelity (merger), and in order to take the money out, I needed to "activate it." That involved no fewer than 5 full pages of fine print disclosure and terms of use statements that I had to "read" and accept, plus my driver's license number, networth, income, source of income, etc.

I was on the phone with an agent while I filled it out, and when I said I didn't want to put those numbers in, she said, and I quote, "you can lie if you want."

 

[rs0460a]

If I provide all of my Company A security information to Company B, and my assets at Company A are stolen... under what specific circumstances is the loss absorbed by me, by Company A, and by Company B?

I tried to run that down but could not get consistent information that could be confirmed via other sources.

From the Fidelity site:

"How secure and private is Full View?

Security

Fidelity is committed to maintaining the highest levels of security and privacy of your personal information. All data is secured within Fidelity, so we can provide you with the security and privacy you have come to trust and expect from Fidelity."

Can't say if this addresses your concern, but you can read the full verbage at:

http://personal.fidelity.com/global/search/inquira/index.shtml?bar=s and use the search words "Full View Security" in the search box request.

- Ron

 

[Corporateburnout]

I had my first contact with Fidelity today. My 529 was moved from TIAA-CREF to Fidelity (merger), and in order to take the money out, I needed to "activate it." That involved no fewer than 5 full pages of fine print disclosure and terms of use statements that I had to "read" and accept, plus my driver's license number, networth, income, source of income, etc.

I was on the phone with an agent while I filled it out, and when I said I didn't want to put those numbers in, she said, and I quote, "you can lie if you want."

Activate what? Full view? it is a service available for people with a fidelity accounts through their website to view their fidelity accounts and other institutions' accounts in one view.

 

[TromboneAl]

No, just activate the account. Sorry for the thread hijack.

 

[Bob_Smith]

Fidelity is committed to maintaining the highest levels of security and privacy of your personal information. All data is secured within Fidelity, so we can provide you with the security and privacy you have come to trust and expect from Fidelity."

Ron, I went in and read the fine print. It appears to me that the customer would be left holding the bag if something went wrong. Here's some of the legalese:

"LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. YOU AGREE THAT NEITHER FIDELITY NOR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES, ACCOUNT PROVIDERS OR ANY OF THEIR AFFILIATES, WILL BE LIABLE FOR ANY HARMS, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ... (iii) UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO OR ALTERATION OF YOUR TRANSMISSIONS OR DATA... (v) THE... UNAUTHORIZED USE..."

Nowhere have I been able to find anything that really spells it all out in layman's terms. If something comes up missing in my account, and I didn't authorize it, who pays what under what specific circumstances?

 

[Alex]

I use the 'linked accounts' option at vanguard - I trust them more than Fidelity.

 

[mathjak107]

people today are to worried about id theft from internet secured sites like banks and brokerages.

i bet very little comes from those sources

most id theft is right from your own garbage can, mail or from stores you shopped in. the biggest source i bet is internal right in the banks themselves my own numbers on my credit card were stolen from a bank atm i used locally at the bank itself . never use this card for any transaction or purchase other than to withdraw my weekly money from my direct deposit account at the bank.

 

[OkieTexan]

I gave the "Full View" a trial run. It looks good! I have not been able to get my bank login to work right. It insists there is a login error. The information is correct. Some of the vendors are not on their list; so you have to "fudge" a cash value into the net worth statement that doesn't update automatically.

However, it worked well for about half of my stuff.

 

[Corporateburnout]

I use the 'linked accounts' option at vanguard - I trust them more than Fidelity.

Why don't you trust Fidelity? Have you had any problems in the past?

 

[Anansi]

Since Fidelity has most of my money, it seems too late for me to start thinking about whether I trust them or not.

I know they have an outstanding web site and their IT guys are obviously very sharp. They should have the security thing pretty much under control. And as others have pointed out, there are lots of ways people can get your personal information and this is one of the last places you need to worry about.

I just started using the site myself and I like it. It doesn't do everythign but it does a lot and it does it well.

 

[Corporateburnout]

Since Fidelity has most of my money, it seems too late for me to start thinking about whether I trust them or not.

I know they have an outstanding web site and their IT guys are obviously very sharp. They should have the security thing pretty much under control. And as others have pointed out, there are lots of ways people can get your personal information and this is one of the last places you need to worry about.

I just started using the site myself and I like it. It doesn't do everythign but it does a lot and it does it well.

I agree with you regarding Fidelity's website being user friendly. I also think that I worry more about bank tellers and employees selling my information rather than website security encryption.

 

[mathjak107]

yep to much worry about web site threat and worrying about a problem you may never have. i had a problem once with my fidelity debit card used fraudulantly. had my credit in 3 days.


got billed 2x recently by a malfunctioning atm got my money from fidelity back in a week.

 

[Alex]

Why don't you trust Fidelity? Have you had any problems in the past?

Actually yes, I did, but I don't blame them completely. I had a 401K account at from a job I held around 15 years ago. I left the money in the plan and eventually it was transfered from Minnesota Mutual to Fidelity when the corporation switched plan adminstrators. Anyway, when I was ready to roll it over to a self directed IRA I contacted Fidelity and somehow they had my account screwed up! They told me that I was only 'vested' for 20% and that if I wanted to roll the account into a self directed IRA I would only recieve 1/5 of what I knew I had coming. Fortunately I had paperwork that confirmed I was 100% vested and it cleared things up. It took a few weeks though. So ever since, I have a bit of distrust towards Fidelity. I still have the money there but only because I like the Contrafund (i've been in it since the early 90's).

 

[rauther]

Changes to Fullview

Did anyone like the changes to the Fidelity Fullview that they made over the weekend. It is very bad. Don't know how to "refresh" my accounts. There is no option to refresh. Also I use to like seeing all my accounts and transactions side-by-side, but that option is gone. Now I have to scroll within each of the windows to see all of them.

This is very bad. I never expected Fidelity to screw up one of their best feature. Is there a way to make them bring back the old interface?

 

[mathjak107]

I went looking for a refresh too. it is now Monday and data is 3 days old. I thought maybe it would auto-refresh but not so far.

 

[bUU]

Thread focused on the changes, themselves, can be found here:

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/fidelity-fullview-changes-67472.html#post1338156

 

[W2R]

Thread focused on the changes, themselves, can be found here:

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/fidelity-fullview-changes-67472.html#post1338156

I'll close this thread and we can continue any further discussion of the changes on the thread bUU pointed out.