MSN MoneyCentral Goes Free

MoneyCentral beta site shows off financial services due out in August.

Mike Hogan, special to PC World

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Unlike the current MoneyCentral site, there is no subscription fee for premium content on the beta site, although some services such as online bill-paying involve individual use charges of their own.

Electronic bill payment is just one of the new features on the beta site. It also lets you remotely access your investment portfolio from any Web browser, provides new 401,000 and college financing planners, and gives referrals to registered financial advisors in your local area.

Additionally, Microsoft is introducing its new Passport Service--a universal Web ID that is intended to heighten security and eliminate repetitive data entry when you log into electronic commerce sites.

Finally, the revamped site will offer even tighter integration with Money 2000, which is due for release in September.

It's All Connected

Unlike most post-1995 financial sites, MSN MoneyCentral and its close competitor Quicken.com by Intuit were designed as ways to deliver the latest financial information and tools to the companies' disk-based personal finance managers--Money and Quicken respectively.

These popular programs offer convenient batch processing, quick navigation, and a degree of integration across different financial functions and user accounts not possible with Web-resident tools. And Microsoft and Intuit are leaders in developing the standards for transferring financial data electronically with a resulting predisposition toward Money and Quicken file formats.

Although most MoneyCentral features can be used independently or even in conjunction with Quicken, the site is most effective when you dial into it from Money, and the Web-based tools and information are customized to serve your particular financial situation.

MoneyCentral draws on the day-to-day account and transaction information contained in your copy of Money and filters the large body of constantly changing financial information for you.

At the simplest level, you get updates of various securities and indexes in your portfolio whenever you connect to the site. And you can set high and low targets that will trigger an alert on your Money home page.

You also can receive notifications of bills due, progress reports on your investments and debt reduction, retirement, and various savings plans as well as alerts--if, say, you aren't having enough taxes withheld or have gaps in your check sequence.

Free Stuff

In this context, MoneyCentral's Advisor FYI service downloads personalized financial guidance alerts formerly requiring a $10 monthly subscription, but now free to registered users. That can include up to 25 real-time security quotes.

Two other MoneyCentral services are now free: Investment Finder, which lets you search a database of 17,000 securities for those that match your investment criteria, and Investment Matcher, which lets you compare stocks and mutual funds to one you already know in order to find investments similar to one that has been a winner for you.

All site visitors now enjoy access to MoneyCentral's detailed company and mutual fund reports from some of the nation's top analysts, plus insider trading data. You also can get e-mail market summaries at the end of the trading day. If you prefer a slightly more structured approach, the site's Research Wizard will step you through a company's fundamentals, stock price history, price targets, and comparisons to others in its industry.

Now you also will have the option to keep your investment portfolio on MoneyCentral as well as in Money on your hard drive and the two will synchronize when you go online. This allows you to access and download portfolio information or make trades from any computer with a Web browser and Internet access.

Additionally, Microsoft has developed relationships with eight large online brokers which it has assembled in a new broker area. You can select one financial institution you work with most frequently and download your account statements and specialized news from it directly into your MoneyCentral portfolio. This feature has been so limited, though, that it probably will be small help to you--it appears to be mainly cross-marketing for the brokers.

Payments and Passports

In addition to opening the door on its in-depth investment resources, MoneyCentral has added services that support other aspects of personal financial management.

MoneyCentral is previewing TransPoint Internet electronic bill presentment and payment services to allow you to receive and pay bills online with participating billers--typically, large utility companies, financial institutions, and department stores. This is in addition to bill payment services such as CheckFree which Money also supports.

Similarly, the MoneyCentral beta site offers the first preview of Microsoft Passport, a new Web service that lets MSN HotMail e-mail users use their HotMail profiles to speed sign-on at other e-commerce sites which subscribe. Those sites must demonstrate to agencies like the Better Business Bureau their commitment to maintaining user privacy.

Passport, which is scheduled to be widely available on MSN and other participating Web sites in Fall 1999, streamlines the downloading of timely information such as portfolio data, daily market summaries, real-time quotes, and e-mail.

Find Colleges, Financial Advisors

Microsoft also has signed several other cooperative deals with various Web service providers. Among them, MoneyCentral users now have access to the planning tools and college information from FastWeb.com to help assemble information on prospective colleges and more than 400,000 available scholarships. You can apply online for both. Similarly, you can use MoneyCentral to find the right financial advisor in your local area and contact that advisor directly.

MoneyCentral is using the database of DALBAR Inc., which conducts in-depth screening of affiliated advisors, requiring that they be full-time professionals serving a significant number of clients with a minimum of five years' experience. Advisors must maintain a clear regulatory record and agree to put client interest first. Finally, Microsoft continues to tighten the links and interchangeability of information between MoneyCentral and its other MSN sites like HotMail, Expedia, and CarPoint.

Whew!

Overall, MSN MoneyCentral is so densely packed with resources that it will take many visits to get a feel for it, much less plumb its depths. At the moment, the beta site a little rough to navigate and likely to be so for a few days. But that, after all, is the point of having a preview site.

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