Intuit recently discontinued their portfolio management product. More sad news for independent advisers/planners. One year ago, Intuit announced their online portfolio management software called Portfolio Minder. It was exciting seeing one of the big companies make a play for this space. If they pulled it off, it would quickly become the standard for small advisers.

A friend on the inside told me the software looked good but they had unrealistic expectations about the rate at which they could sign up users. They were expecting many thousands of advisers in the first few years. IMHO, the only way that could have happened is if they were going after advisers/brokers by signing them up wholesale through their broker/dealers. I don’t think that was the plan.

Intuit’s stated reason for the shutdown was historical data conversions. Namely, converting data from other portfolio management systems. Speaking from experience, this is definitely the trickiest problem with portfolio management—it’s almost impossible to do a clean data conversion. Often new users’ first experience with your software is troubleshooting their horribly mangled data.

From the e-mail Intuit sent to their users:

Our pilot testing in late 2005 and early 2006 indicated that we had successfully created a product that was easy to use and met the needs of the independent advisor for a low-cost, self-serve solution. Unfortunately, when we began bringing customers on board in the spring of 2006, customer activity and usage demonstrated that the data complexity and demands for historical data entry are significantly more exacting than our pilot indicated.

As a result, we realized that we did not achieve our objective of providing a reliable, low-cost, simple portfolio management solution that could be successfully utilized by most financial advisors without a high level of support. Rather than continue to market a product that could not meet your needs or our objectives, we’ve chosen to exit the business.

We would like to offer our sincere regrets for any adverse effects this decision will have for our customers.

If you want a little more insight, here is a blog written by a manager at Portfolio Minder.