Citibank Smith Barney Testing MyFi, Financial Advice and Account Aggregation for the Mass Market (NetBanker)

Apparently, Citibank has been testing a new investment advisory service this summer, myFi, targeting certain Citibank credit card customers. Its first online mention appeared in a frequent-flyer forum, FlyerTalk, May 31 (here) and in the personal finance forum, FatWallet, June 13 (here). The bank has been testing mileage premiums for opening a myFi account and/or increasing spending on a Citi card.

The service consists of a Web-based investment area which will include trading and account-aggregation services later this year (see note 1), combined with telephone and in-person help from non-commissioned Citi Smith Barney advisors. The NY Times's Your Money columnist Ron Lieber tested the human portion of the offering in a Long Island branch and reported on it in his column today.

myFi's director of financial advice is Jonathon Clements, a long-time Wall Street Journal personal finance writer who recently left the paper. If he can instill his pragmatic personal finance outlook to Citi's offering, it would help differentiate it from similar offerings. Andy Sieg is managing director of the service.

The initial creative approach is to use a "financial wellness" theme. Today, the website is bare bones (screenshot below), with a few PDF files available for download. It's clearly a work in progress. The bank should slap a "beta" tag in the upper-right corner so that it's not unfairly judged as a complete offering.

Notes:
1. For more information, see our Online Banking Report on Account Aggregation.

2. According to Compete, myfi.com had 2,400 unique visitors in July, the first month with any significant traffic.

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