Yodlee (NASDAQ: YDLE), the cloud-based platform driving innovation in digital financial services, today shared some of the key components of its unique Data Network: a unique 12-step process for adding value to transactional data to make it actionable for both financial providers and consumers.
Yodlee’s 12-step process for data is an integrated component of the Yodlee Platform, which today powers a wide variety of financial apps and services used by millions of consumers and small businesses globally through hundreds of leading financial institutions and innovative online companies.
“Transactional data from financial sites and data feeds can often be in fairly bad shape,” said Eric Connors, SVP of Products at Yodlee. “To make it meaningful, the data needs to be cleansed, normalized, validated, consolidated with other pieces of information. And, there is huge value that can be added to the data – like merchant identification and geo location – all making it richer, more meaningful, and more actionable information within the experience for which it’s being presented. Our mission has always been to provide the most robust, accurate, and reliable data to power the most compelling financial apps and experiences.”
A crucial item of data could be a checking account balance, an APR, a credit card transaction, a mortgage payment – anything financial. Such data powers apps and services like financial wellness, credit monitoring, digital banking, wealth management, and much more. Every single piece of data that goes through the Yodlee Platform - across 12,500+ global sources, hundreds of millions of accounts, for millions of consumers - goes through this rigorous 12-step process before being presented to the user, to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the information. This entire process happens in near real-time, at scale, with bank-grade security.
Yodlee’s 12-step process uniformly and securely gathers, searches, enriches, and operationalizes huge volumes of transactional data.
At a high level, the Yodlee 12-steps include: (1) COLLECT: data from 12,500+ sources and hundreds of thousands of account types globally, (2) CONSOLIDATE: multiple sources into a single account transaction, (3) CLEANSE: and check for omissions & duplicates; validate totals and balances, (4) NORMALIZE: debit vs. credit, positive vs. negative, lots sizes, account & holding types checked, (5) CATEGORIZE: and provide an inventory of merchants, addresses & securities, (6) NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING: combinatorial tokenized description search against directory, (7) IDENTIFICATION: rule-based identification of merchants, categories, locations & securities within search results, (8) AUGMENTATION: transactional data combined with other known information (e.g., Google, Yelp), (9) MARKET RULES: applied so categories are modified to support site and country-specific requirements, (10) USER RULES: applied so categories are modified to support user-defined rules, (11) ALERTS & NOTIFICATIONS: user-defined notifications are enabled, and (12) MODIFICATIONS BASED ON USER SETTINGS: user-led overrides are validated.
“Aggregation – that is, the ability to see multiple accounts in one place - has transformed digital financial experiences, but how it works behind-the-scenes has always been a bit of a mystery,” said CEB TowerGroup Senior Director Nicole Sturgill. “Education, transparency, and a thorough data management program for the aggregation process is critical. Providers need to compare and contrast different aggregation approaches in order to make the best choices for their customers and their firm.”