Apps and tools to manage your money from your mobile device

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This was published 7 years ago

Apps and tools to manage your money from your mobile device

By Adam Courtenay

Our mobile devices are becoming the go-to instruments of convenient commerce, offering something that consumers are only just beginning to come to terms with – a world of instantaneous self-wealth management.

Already consumer spending through mobile devices closely matches web spending. Australians this year are forecast to spend $17 billion through their mobiles and tablets and $18 billion through PCs. By 2020, it will be more than double PC spending, according to banking research firm Forrester Research.

Whether we buy one or not, the new iPhone will affect our lives.

Whether we buy one or not, the new iPhone will affect our lives.Credit: Glenn Hunt

With all this money being directed from our handsets, it's no surprise apps touting financial convenience are mushrooming. There are apps for micro-budgeting, stockmarket and portfolio investment as well as personal accounting. On the web there are credit scoring firms offering to rate your creditworthiness as well as a host of new "robo-advice" online outlets.

Only 15 per cent of Australians are using financial apps or web-based tools, according to research by industry super fund-owned bank ME. But those who do swear by them.

ME found nine out of 10 users of personal apps say they would continue to use the apps or tools, or use them more frequently than 12 months ago. The most popular ways to use apps were to pay bills on time (41 per cent), stick to a budget (30 per cent), reach a savings goal (28 per cent), reduce debt (24 per cent) and buy property (24 per cent).

App makers talk a lot about convenience, but they are also about killing competition. Just about all of them want to be one-stop shops. For the big banks, that means directing as many customers back to their own services as possible. For independent app-makers, it's about making themselves the financial end game.

Forrester's principal analyst Tim Sheedy agrees that the big four's bank apps are always self-serving: "They're mostly about driving outcomes that will always be driven back to the bank," he says. All the same, they are also offering some exciting innovations. In February ANZ released its tap-and-go payments app for Android phones that syncs with ATMs, allowing customers to withdraw up to $100 in cash. Likewise, CBA Cardless Cash now lets customers withdraw up to $500 cash a day without a card, using a simple code generated by the bank to the phone. "If your daughter is stranded without money somewhere, you simply send the code to her mobile and she can access the ATM whether she's a customer or not," explains Sheedy.

The largest space for independent apps is self-budgeting. The most popular is Pocketbook, which categorises spending on anything from groceries to clothing. Budget apps are all linked into bank accounts and credit cards so as to offer a real-time view of your spending. Other apps include Splitwise, Good Budget, Expensify and ASIC's TrackMySPEND and companion app TrackMyGOALS.

One of the most popular features of TrackMySPEND is its unique "psychological" buttons, which separate "wants" from "needs". "If I buy a tub of Ben and Jerry's ice-cream, it asks whether this is a need or a want," says accounting software expert Sholto MacPherson of Digital First. "You decide what kind of spending it is. It really has taught me to think properly about money."

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In the investment arena, the US-born Acorns arrived in Australia in February with the promise of converting spare change into investments. If you buy a coffee for, say, $3.50, you can program the app to round up to $4 and place the 50¢ "change" into a chosen investment.

Much more ambitious is Sharesight, which wants to be the one-stop shop for all your investments. Like the budgeting apps, it is linked into bank accounts (as well as all manner of investment accounts), which daily feed into it. It provides performance and tax reporting and is accessible by accountants and financial advisers. "Whether the investor has a share account with Commsec or a self-managed super fund, we can put it all together and give the investor total line of sight," says chief executive Doug Morris.

In a similar one-stop-shop vein, MyProsperity is a personal accounting app that can accommodate such things as wills, tax second property information, budgeting, insurance and superannuation. It also offers an instant digital sign-off on documents. "To provide quality advice, you need data in real time, says managing director Peter McCarthy. "How's the cash flow, how's the bank balance, what's your current property worth? We're offering real-time access to all data in the one place," he says.

These all-encompassing apps are only partially "ïntelligent" – to be fully effective, they need to be linked to proper financial advice. By contrast, robo-advice is almost (but not entirely) human-less. They offer advice based on actuarial probabilities written into their code. Consumers answer questions and the robo-adviser sends back recommendations.

Some offer commoditised portfolios that "fit" the customer's risk profile. The best-known and longest-running is Stockspot. Among the others coming on stream are Map My Plan, which offers a financial fitness score; Clover, which describes itself as offering "goals-based" advice; OmniwealthDirect, which launched this week; and Six Park, which has the backing of four founders of the Future Fund.

One of the most ambitious is CapitalU, due to be launched in July, and which co-founder Greg Einfeld says will offer almost the full gamut of advice including when and if a person can afford to retire, if they are in the right super fund and what alternatives are available – but CapitalU does not offer insurance advice.

Will robots replace human experts? Probably not for some time. As one industry insider noted: "They will offer basic data that will complement the work done by real advisers. The value-add will always be in the analysis after the basic data has been prepared."

  • What apps do you use to manage your money? Let us know in the comments.

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