In an email to current users, Balance Financial, a personal financial management app acquired by TaxAct in 2013, announced it will shut down operations on January 31, 2017.
See the email announcement below:
Balance Financial shutdown email announcement sent to users
Balance Financial was an alternative to well-known personal financial management apps, or PFM, such as Mint.com and Personal Capital that performed account aggregation to deliver a consolidated dashboard of a user’s financial accounts.
In the wake of Intuit’s decision to discontinue its Financial Data APIs, any PFM apps using Intuit’s aggregation had to migrate to other account aggregation options (See How Intuit’s account aggregation shutdown may impact the fintech solutions you use)
One provider, Guide Financial, shut down as a result of the change combined with other changes in its business model (See Guide Financial to shut down operations on October 11.)
I listed Balance Financial as a potential alternative for Guide Financial users, but quickly removed it since I had no success in connecting with the company for a statement regarding support for the application in the near future.
Alas, it seems that TaxACT is not interested in supporting Balance Financial beyond January 31, 2017.
I suspect that the number of advisors using the Balance Financial app is very low, likely below a dozen, so few are likely to be affected by the shutdown. What’s less clear is how many retail customers Balance has and what alternatives they find offer similar functionality and pricing to that of Balance.
Have any tips? Feel free to contact me.
