Wells Fargo, Bank of America, BBVA and others started personal finance management (PFM) features inside their online banking.
It means that I, as a customer can analyze my spending month by month, what am i spending on travel, food, entertainment, etc. To do this, first I have to categorize my transactions, and then I can enjoy watching the nice pie charts.
And IT IS very important for me to be cost-conscious in these times. Monitor my money going-out, control my budgets, maybe limit my spending.
These features are available since decades in Intuit Quicken and Microsoft Money, why not use them? Because they cost $60-80, and you have to export your transactional data from the online bank and import it to this desktop softwares. Two tasks that block
customers from using such kind of software.
But hey, if a bank gives me PFM for free without the export-import challenge, I am the first to open an account there. (What I exactly did, when the first bank came up with this online banking feature this year.)