MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Mint.com
(http://www.mint.com) the leading online personal finance service, today
announced the release of its breakthrough investment tracking and analysis
software. This software, a new feature added to the company's award-winning,
free service, delivers a comprehensive and objective view of each Mint.com
user's full net worth. The complete financial picture enables better financial
decisions with the distinct ease-of-use for which Mint.com is known. With
this launch, the company is announcing that the Mint.com service is now out of
beta and signed up its 500,000th user this week.
"The current market turmoil makes it even more critical for people to have
both a clear view of their full financial position, and the tools to make the
best decisions possible," said Aaron Patzer, CEO and founder of Mint.com. "We
launched a private beta of our investment software five months ago, and have
been testing and improving it since, using feedback from our users."
Consistent with Mint.com's mission to help people do more with their
money, the software design started with discovering the investors' most
important, unmet needs. "Mint users, on average, hold three investment and
retirement accounts, but had no way to view their total portfolio," added
Patzer. "They wanted clear, unbiased information on their investments'
performance and to see the fees they were paying. Lastly, they wanted to see
spending and investment accounts in one place ... creating a true dashboard
for their financial life. Today's release represents a breakthrough in the
industry, by meeting all those needs, and more."
Mint.com's new Investments tracking and analysis software delivers:
Unique, Comprehensive View of All Investment Accounts
Mint.com is now the only place consumers can get a complete and graphical
view of all their investment accounts, in a single place, for free. The
software updates all holdings automatically, delivering end-of-day prices
across the user's brokerage, mutual fund, IRA, 401k, and other accounts. It
also automatically categorizes all transactions in all accounts, including
buys, sells and fees. "We've designed Mint.com to provide the timely,
comprehensive insights which long-term investors need," says Patzer.
Unique, Portfolio-level Asset Allocation Information
One of the most important decisions an investor makes is the allocation of
investments across stocks, bonds and other asset categories. (1) With today's
launch, Mint.com becomes the only free source of automatic, portfolio-level,
asset allocation information on the web today.
Unbiased, Transparent Information on Investment Performance
The software also compares any investment's value to its cost basis and
versus major indices, from the S&P to the Dow. Mint.com users can now readily
see whether higher cost assets, such as actively managed mutual funds, are
worth the added fees; and if they, or their broker, have above or below
average stock-picking skills.
Web 2.0 Capabilities Deliver Critical Information to Investors,
Effortlessly
Mint.com now automatically determines the investor's best and worst
performing assets -- and displays them both in the Mint.com user's account and
their weekly summary email. This feature gives users important and timely
data with no added effort.
Complete Transparency on Fees
A Mint.com survey conducted in July 2008 found that more than 40% of
online Americans either didn't know what they paid in investment account fees
-- or believed they paid no fees. Mint.com gives users complete visibility
into those fees and can even send automatic email or SMS alerts when a fee is
charged or an interest rate changes -- just as the service already does for a
user's checking, savings, and credit card accounts.
New IRA Center Helps Users Avoid High 401K Fees -- Saving Users Thousands
over a Lifetime
Mint's research has shown that, of the investment accounts held by its
users, 401k accounts have among the highest fees. With the average 401k
charging 0.5% in maintenance fees, users holding $50,000 in a 401K account
with a previous employer incur $250 annually in fees. "Paying $250 in fees
over 20 years means our users were giving away thousands of dollars in
retirement savings," offered Patzer. "For most, a Rollover IRA offers a
smarter alternative, with much lower fees, and greater choice in investments."
These findings drove Mint.com to launch its IRA Advice Center -- offering
advice and tools to help Mint.com users identify and act on better retirement
savings options. The IRA Advice Center includes educational content from
Mint.com and visitors are shown the best, personalized Rollover IRA choices
from among leading US brokerage companies, including Fidelity, Scottrade, and
others.
Along with the launch of investment management software and the IRA Advice
Center, Mint.com has given users the ability to create Custom Categories for
all their spending and income. This enhancement enables Mint.com users to
create even more personalized analyses of their financial lives, including
making it simple to separate business from personal spending, and to export
that data to secure business expense reimbursement and to facilitate year-end
tax preparation.
"Today's release is the latest in a series of product enhancements since
launching Mint.com into public beta just over a year ago. Other releases
included the addition of Mortgages and Loans, Budgeting, Cash Flow tracking
and Data Categorization and Exporting," said Patzer. "With all of these
improvements in place, I'm comfortable saying that the product's basic
functionality is now complete and that we're out of our beta stage. Everyone
at Mint is gratified by the support and enthusiasm of our first 500,000 users,
and I can promise that we have more exciting new features coming soon for
them."
Mint.com is the leading online personal finance service, providing 500,000
users a fresh, easy and intelligent approach to money management. And it's
free. Mint is tracking $50 billion in transactions, $15 billion in assets and
has identified more than $100 million in potential savings for its users.
Designed to be effortless, Mint.com takes less than five minutes to set up.
Users register anonymously using only a valid email address. Mint then does
the rest, securely downloading transaction data from more than 7,000 bank,
credit card and investment accounts on a daily basis. Users never need to
import or synch their data. Mint applies patent-pending technology and
proprietary algorithms to categorize transactions; provide a unified view of
all account activity; alert users to low balances, bank fees, upcoming bills,
and even potentially suspicious account activity; and give users personalized
suggestions for significant savings opportunities. Mint is rated top in its
category by PC World and PC Magazine and has received two Webby awards, a
Webware 100 award, an American Business Award and accolades from TechCrunch,
Lifehacker, the Wall Street Journal, Time and BusinessWeek since its
September, 2007 launch.
Mint's management team includes seasoned industry veterans drawn from the
ranks of Charles Schwab, eBay, Expedia, Intuit, PGP and other leaders in the
finance, security and software spaces. Investors include top venture capital
firms and prominent individuals associated with companies including Blue Nile,
Google, Intuit, PassMark Security, PayPal, Yahoo! and others.
For more information on Mint.com's free online personal finance service,
please visit http://www.mint.com.
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