Wealthfront/Yodlee

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1

Once again the Wealthfront integration isn’t working. I sent a message to their support to complain and they say it is Yodlee’s fault. Wealthfront isn’t on the “Institution Alerts” google sheet, so I don’t know what the issue is. But I do know this: I’m fed up. Isn’t hasn’t worked consistently in ages.

Can anyone recommend a HYSA (high yield savings account) with a stable integration? I used Vanguard’s Cash plus for a while but they don’t give you much transaction details and that was frustrating so you have to go online and snoop around to find out who made that withdrawal.

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2

Have you considered the Fidelity Cash Management account? It’s like a combined savings/checking account. And Fidelity has an open banking connection with Tiller/Yodlee, so excellent integration.

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Do they give you complete transaction details in the downloads? With Vanguard’s it just says something unhelpful like “Cash out” in the description.

4

They do. Here’s a sample:

DIRECT DEPOSIT APA TREAS 3 MISC PAY
DIRECT DEBIT CITI AUTOPAY PAYMENT
DIRECT DEBIT HEALTHPARTNERSPREMIUM
REDEMPTION FROM CORE ACCOUNT FIDELITY GOVERNMENT MONEY MARKET
DIVIDEND RECEIVED FIDELITY GOVERNMENT MONEY MARKET
DIRECT DEPOSIT VANGUARD SELINVESTMENT
DIRECT DEBIT CARDMEMBER SERWEB PYMT
DIRECT DEBIT DISCOVER E-PAYMENT
DIRECT DEBIT COMCAST XXXXXXXXXXX1234

Also check out the following topic for additional info:

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5

Thanks! Appreciate the info.

6

Another Fidelity CMA user here. If anything they give you too much information. The purchase/redemption transactions every time you either deposit or spend any cash are a small annoyance. I just delete them (as I think does @Mark.S) and it only takes a second to do so, but those transactions are not particularly helpful for anything.

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7

I use Ally - it’s been one of the most stable integrations with Tiller of all my accounts. Also really like their savings buckets features - you can track multiple goals within their tool all under a single account.

Here’s a referral link if you want to check it out:

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I could not agree more and I have had the same issue with ‘Tasty’. If I were a leader of Tiller - “The mission at Tiller is to provide our clients a robust platform of tools to take control of their finances by downloading every transaction and account balance from any institution.” Blaming Yodlee is not being accountable. Find the solution or hire coders to manage the feed. It is not reasonable to have to change institutions to find a stable download. Open banking should be just that, Open.

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It is Yodlee, they’re awful. They don’t use the open banking integration from what I’ve heard. Plaid does, but maybe Plaid isn’t supported at enough places, I don’t know.

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Yodlee most certainly uses Open Banking APIs where they exist. It’s on the financial institutions to adopt Open Banking, not Yodlee or Tiller. Yodlee and Tiller can’t do it for them, and they can’t back-end provide it for them through clever coding (and, to be clear, it would also be a very bad thing if they could get to our data with clever coding). All Yodlee can do when an Open Banking API is unavailable is scrape the institution’s website to get your data, which is always going to be less reliable and more prone to breaking.

Unfortunately, relatively few financial institutions have adopted Open Banking standards at the moment (see a list that Tiller provides here–it looks like a lot until you realize that there are over 10,000 institutions that Tiller tracks). Financial institutions are required to adopt Open Banking standards in the next few years by a CFPB rule that was issued last year, but it’s not clear if that rule will survive current developments at the CFPB.

I use a number of financial institutions in Tiller that have adopted Open Banking, and the connections to Tiller are terrific–quick and reliable. Fwiw, I’ve used other products like Tiller that use Plaid. Some of the non-Open Banking connections are better; some are worse. This is why Tiller is pushing toward a multi-aggrgator approach that will provide multiple aggregator options that hopefully include at least one that works for any institutions that have not yet adopted Open Banking standards.

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11

In addition to the excellent comments by @dmetiller I will add:

  • Data aggregation between 1:N financial companies is a very complex service

  • Financial institutions are frequently changing or upgrading their interfaces

  • Security changes made by financial institutions are very fluid and they very often have an impact to their 3rd party interfaces

  • Some major financial companies like Fidelity have their own data aggregation software to support their clients and also share data with other data aggregators. This creates another layer between the financial company, Yodlee and Tiller. It has a big domino effect creating ongoing troubleshooting and changes to downstream services like Yodlee and Tiller.

  • Smaller financial institutions have limited resources to support a robust 3rd party interface. They simply provide users with the ability to download their own data in .csv format.

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