Bright Start Savings - for investors NOT advisors
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Hi there,
It's been another full month. Do you have any progress to show for it?
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It has been THREE AND A HALF YEARS. Do you have any intention of adding ILLINOIS's OFFICIAL 529 ACCOUNT PROVIDER to your platform or not? [rant redacted]
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I'm not ranting. I'm pleading for customer service. If you won't provide it (and keep deleting my posts) I will take my business elsewhere. This post does not violate any term of service or rule.
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Can't say that I do not share in some of @Jdf15 's frustrations on this topic, especially seeing all the periodic "financial institution" posts come and go with no traction on this one (especially for us early adopters). That being said, I treat the lack of connectivity as a missing feature in evaluating the total experience. Other competing products may offer Bright Start but may lack elsewhere. At the end of the day, as consumers, we speak with our dollars. If there were enough people upvoting this feature and/or leaving because of this, I can only assume/hope that Simplifi would prioritize it better.
To Simplifi — In full transparency, this feature should be switched BACK to "Active" (vs. "In Review"). Some of my frustration is honestly the false sense of hope that 'In Review' provides because it is apparent that it is NOT actively in review (for years). I've had a couple of Simplifi folks call me directly inquiring about my experience and the sole thing I have mentioned is the lack of Bright Start. In all honesty, those customer calls have the opposite effect. I'm being asked for my opinion but nothing happens on the backend, so I'd rather not be asked in the first place.
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I'm trying to think through why Simplifi can't do this when other sevices can. Those other services use Yodlee to connect between financial systems. I can't find what Simplifi uses, but they may operate using their own proprietary service. In that case, it may be they're having trouble getting the Illinois Bright Start plan to adopt their own propriety connection service (or rather just add the individual versus advisor portal access). Totally a guess, but sometimes understanding the reason for the delay helps. Why they can't offer more info on that is beyond me unless they don't want to admit that their service or channel access is inferior (see: this entire thread :)
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I brought this back up in a chat with customer service today and received this disappointing reply:
I'm sorry that I cannot provide specific information on if other customers have already requested this institution’s addition to the program, and "Mint" is not a Quicken product. Unfortunately, the request to a financial institution to join the program is an internal process and we cannot provide more information about the process. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Is there anything else I can help you with?When you reference something as an internal process and won't provide any information to anyone, it's obnoxious. There is no other way to put it. There is absolutely no legal, ethical, or logical reason why you can't state what the problem is. @Coach Paco provided updates early on about needing the greenlight from Bright Start and I've actually spoken to someone on the technical team at Bright Start (UBS). They weren't aware of any such request and they were open to assisting Quicken in any way needed to allow their service access - they were aware of the other services that do provide access.
Ball is in your court, Quicken. I was a beta tester on Simplifi and the silence on this is now deafening.
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Hello All,
At this time, there is no further update to provide on adding support for Bright Start College Savings Plans. Although this financial institution has been requested, we have no control over whether or not it gets added. In the meantime, users are welcome to contact Bright Start directly and share this link with them so they can request support for Simplifi from our Service Provider:
Sorry for not having a better answer for everyone!
-Coach Natalie
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@Coach Natalie This confirms that you're using Intuit for the connection. Thank you for the link! Bright Start already shows up in Intuit products though. Can you see why Intuit has this connection on their end but Quicken does not? Quicken also used to have this connection before the sale and for a while after the sale. If there is something Bright Start needs to do, then I can communicate with them, but it still appears that the issue is with Simplifi and not your Service Provider.
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Hello @bowgy4,
To clarify, we use Intuit as our Aggregation Service Provider, however, Quicken and Simplifi are not Intuit products. We wouldn't have any additional insight to provide as to why this connection is available in Intuit products, but not Quicken products, or why it used to be available in Quicken and no longer is.
At this point, we've made the request to have the bank added to Simplifi, and will continue to update this post accordingly if and when any new info becomes available. I know this isn't what you all would like to hear, and I really wish I could do something further to push this along, but we just have to play the waiting game at this point.
Hopefully you can get somewhere with the bank directly now that you have the link. 🙂
-Coach Natalie
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For those wondering, I just submitted a request to Union Bank & Trust to check on their Intuit connection and to ask Intuit directly why they aren't available to Quicken/Simplifi users but are available to Intuit users. I gave them a link to ythe Intuit site where they can contact an account manager.
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Is there an update on this topic? Bright Start remains the official 529 plan for Illinois and other products are able to connect to this service.
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I was a beta tester and have been requesting since since 2019. Quicken has the login for the Advisor portal, which is the same as the consumer portal, just with a different login address. They simply haven't added the other address. They have never provided any feedback that they tried and couldn't get it to work, or anything. They have asked me to request it directly from their connection provider (as if they have no power themselves, but a single consumer's request will make a difference) but their connection provider already has the connection - in fact it's in the connection provider's own products. I contacted the bank directly and they have not blocked the web scraping access, but they also said they aren't paying the connection provider the fee for the direct connection service and have no plans to do so.
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Status of this 'request' has been "In Review" status for over a year as well, though we haven't received much of an update in that time. I believe this should be placed back to "Active" status since it appears that this connection isn't really being investigated anymore.
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Following. Would love to see this account connection added.
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Just signed up for Simplifi. Going to cancel now that I see this isn't available, and hasn't been acted on in so long. 👋
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@Coach Natalie Being a customer of Intuit's aggregation service, can you just email them and ask them why this account isn't appearing? Someone has to have a reason somewhere.
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@bowgy4, you can contact the bank directly and share this link with them:
-Coach Natalie
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How is this still an issue after 3 years? This has me questioning my decision to recently change to simplifi. I'm now looking at other products.
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Yeah - the weird thing is that Bright Start for Advisors (which is the same bank Union Bank and Trust) shows fine with the address https://portal.ubtrust.com/Portal/paport/brightdirections/ but not the Bright Start for Investors login which is virtually identical https://portal.ubtrust.com/Portal/paport/brightdirections/. The bank has connectivity, so emailing the bank doesn't fix anything.
Both account types show up fine in the aggregation provider's own online services. FWIW, we'll see if the Intuit OFX support team has anything to say.
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Sorry @Coach Natalie, but I've already done that to no avail. They believe the issue isn't on their end because the service works for others.
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To anyone following this thread, please submit your request directly to the bank, UBT. You can do so through Bright Start's contact us page here: . Once you've done that, please post back here and then please post back again how your conversation goes. I sent another message, but here is the last interaction I had with them where they didn't really answer my question:
Currently, Bright Start does not link directly with Quicken. When you login to your account through our website, you can export the transaction information into Excel. From there, it is our understanding that you can edit or convert the information for upload into individual financial software, like Quicken.I will forward your email for future consideration.
I hope that is helpful! If you have questions or need any further assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
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When I sent them this message:
The problem is that Quicken products, which use Intuit connections, aren't seeing the Bright Start listing at the top of the list - they only see the second listing for BrightDirections and the bottom listing for Bright Start Savings - Advisor. This is something that someone from your data team would likely know about and can look into by contacting Intuit (Contact Us - OFX | Intuit). I don't know if there is an additional fee to make Bright Start accessible beyond Intuit's own products, but that's what Intuit could tell you if you contact them.What I'm hoping for is:
1) Confirmation that someone is connecting with Intuit to ask about this and specifically request to make the accounts visible to Quicken/Simplifi
2) Some feedback from Intuit on why it was visible in Mint, but not available in Simplifi/Quicken. It used to be available in Quicken before they spun off Quicken as a separate company, but Quicken confirmed that they still use Intuit for their connections to financial institutions.
The response didn't really instill confidence that they followed up or found out what the issue is. They didn't confirm whether or not it's supposed to work or why their bank would show in one product but not another (not clarifying if it was a cost consideration, etc.) Perhaps if lots of people email them, we'll get a different response than this:
I have forwarded your message to the correct department. I have been advised that we do not have any plans to make changes when it comes to linking to Quicken/Simplifi at this time.We value your input, and I will pass your suggestions along to our web team. We appreciate the opportunity to enhance our client and advisor experience and will forward your comments to the correct team.
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@Coach Natalie — Has Simplifi's engineering team had an opportunity to really examine this one? The fact that Intuit and other aggregators have connectivity to UBT leads me to believe that this is a Quicken/Simplifi specific issue.
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Hello @MrGood,
We do not have any further information or insight on this request available at this time. I can confirm that this financial institution has been requested, but I cannot guarantee if or when a requested financial institution will be added. As soon as any news/updates become available, we'll be sure to post to this thread to let everyone know.
Thank you!
-Coach Kristina
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Just wanted to voice support for adding Bright Start 529 Savings support. I am able to link all of my other accounts.
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Please add a link to Bright Start 529 Savings. This has been available through Mint and it appeared in this forum that Quicken committed to adding this link in response to a request in 2021. This is even more critical with Mint users who would like to switch over. If this is not added, I will switch to [removed]
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I recently transitioned from Mint and college savings is one of the most important entries you want to track if you have kids. Missing it negates the one stop shop for your finances. If possible, please raise the priority of this request.
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Following. I am new to Simplifi, and I am disappointed to see this issue open with no measurable action for so many years (while kind of suggesting that progress is being attempted). This, along with the similar lack of action on Zillow/KBB, is making me question the ability of Quicken to deliver basic new product features at a reasonable pace and is making me seriously consider alternate products. I hope things can turn around soon.
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+1 for adding support for Bright Start 529 (ubtrust login site). Another recent convert to Simplifi from Mint where this account integration worked without issue. Is there an ETA from the product team? I can’t imagine this being technically hard/costly to implement — just a matter of priority.
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Please add a connection for Bright Start 529 to Quicken Simplifi.
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