GERMANTOWN, Tenn. – There's wireless, and then there's aggregation. In the case of uMonitor, the two go hand-on-hand. uMonitor, an account aggregation firm, built its product from day one to be run on wireless devices. uMonitor President/CEO Dinesh Sheth, who founded uMonitor, has a strong wireless background. He was the lead architect for SkyTel as they embarked on their very successful wireless path. uMonitor is looking to penetrate the CU aggregation market by partnering with firms that are already strong in the space, such as FundsXpress and Vertical Innovation. The credit union community may be more familiar with aggregation powerhouse Yodlee.com, which has made a number of deals in the space, but Sheth said if he's able to get a person to spend 7 days on his product, and 7 days on Yodlee, his wins out almost all of the time. "It's much friendlier and customizable. That has been the key differentiator," said Sheth. uMonitor aggregates data from about 4,600 different Web sites. About 3,000 of those are financial in nature. The others are a mix of reward programs, airline miles, and a number of lifestyle sites. The uMonitor solution can be set up so a user does not have to type in any passwords or log-ins just about any site visited, even a non-financial site. For example, a user could have their MyYahoo! site come up automatically. But aggregation is still aggregation, so how else does Sheth see uMonitor getting a jump on the competitors? "Analysis. Once you aggregate, you want to look at all this information and offer net worth statements, multiple views and shared views," said Sheth. Shared views can be particularly useful for an investor dealing with his or her financial advisor. uMonitor users can create a view of their accounts they want the advisor to see and essentially give that advisor access to that view only. The advisor, who must also be a uMonitor user, logs on to uMonitor and has their client's aggregated "view" available in his or her uMonitor screen. Sheth said aggregators still face the screen scraping problem. Some of uMonitor's providers offer OFX or IFX feeds, but the majority still have to be screen-scraped. Sheth sees that changing in the next 12 months as more financials embrace OFX and IFX. Selling to the financial space takes sensitivity to security and privacy said Sheth. "Bankers are always sensitive. The first question is always `is it secure' and `who looks at my data' The second question is `how do I roll it out to my customers integrating it with the rest of my services,' " said Sheth. The next step, said Sheth, is cross-selling. Financial leaders want to know how they can maximize the system to cross-sell targeted products to their customers. It can be as simple as a banner ad, or as sophisticated as a targeted message specifically for customers who meet certain criteria, such as $25,000 in investments. uMonitor is up and running on about 25 sites, with six more coming on in the next month. The company is one-third funded by its founders, and the rest through venture capital and angel investors. Credit union customers include Telesis Community CU, Pacific Resource CU and Courts and Records FCU, all which get the product through a partnership with Vertical Innovation. " It's going well. We're about a month into it, and we're real happy," said Renee Mackanin, vice president of marketing for Telesis (www.telesiscu.com). Mackanin said so far 139 of the CU's members have signed up for its portal package, which is how they access the aggregation piece. Vertical Innovation bundles a portal, aggregation and other components for CUs. "We want to be ahead of the times. I think our goal is we are cashless, so we have always been a leader in technology. We want to offer our members more access to their money," said Mackanin. [email protected]