The point of My Financial Insight is to provide investors with an understanding of how to use the myriad tools available to them when it comes to managing their financial lives. Unlike other financial sites and blogs, we're not about hyping stocks or discussing specific investments. Rather, we aim to educate investors about the tools available to them - such as brokerage websites, working with an advisor, using online banking etc.
What makes us experts here? Perhaps now is the time for full disclosure. I am a co-founder and principal of a research and consulting firm called Corporate Insight. We provide competitive intelligence to the retail financial services industry - focusing on brokerage, banking, credit cards, and mutual funds. Our clients are the firms themselves (e.g. Merrill Lynch, Schwab, Fidelity, Citibank, etc.). I and others at my company have actual accounts at all of the major financial services firms and our analysts are constantly monitoring the websites and services of these firms. We report back to these companies how their competitors are changing their websites and services and provide them with research that helps them improve their offerings to you, the investing public.
We have been tracking the industry and the websites since the "launch" of the internet as we know it today - way back in 1996. We have written literally thousands of pages about financial websites and have reviewed hundreds of online tools, statements, calculators, etc. It is not an understatement to say that our analysts are experts in what is happening in the world of online finance.
So, why are bringing our expertise to the investing community? As the web becomes more accepted as the primary customer service channel, and as advances in website design, technology, and broadband connections have created more sophisticated websites, the sites themselves have become more complicated. We thought we would be able to bring our experience to bear to help investors navigate this increasingly complicated medium. We are not out to sell you anything. We are not out to ask you to pony up for a subscription. The only thing we may ask of you in the future is your opinion, which would help to improve the service you experience from the firms that you do business with.
As we build this blog, we aim to give you the tools to make decisions about which firms to put your money with, how to use their tools, how to get the most out of their services, etc. We won't tell you which firms to go to, what stocks to buy, or when to cash out of the markets - many other sites do that. We hope simply to make you smarter financial consumers.
Best,
Michael Ellison
Executive Vice President
Corporate Insight, Inc.
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