Account aggregator Kublax has gone into administration after failing to find funding to develop their site.
Kublax sent an email to its users yesterday, explaining the situation:
It is with great regret that we announce the closure of our service as we have been forced to take the business into administration. Over the course of the last 6 months we have been trying hard to raise funding which would have allowed us to launch our enhanced new product and develop our offering further. Unfortunately we now have to admit defeat. We are sorry that we have not been able to repay your trust in Kublax and particularly disappointed not to be able to launch the new enhanced version of the service which was being shaped to a very large extent by your Feedback on the current service.
Users will be particularly worried about their bank account login information sitting around on Kublax servers, but Kublax state that as they were based on the Yodlee account aggregator platform, all accounts will be deleted, and transactional data, which is held on Kublax servers, will be deleted by 19th February.
Warning signs
The writing had been on the wall for a few weeks. I noticed a thread in the MoneySavingExpert forum from a user who was having problems getting in touch with Kublax following a problem they had with the service. A normally responsive company had suddenly become difficult to contact, which is never a good sign.
Sadly, their website has yet to be updated with the news, and it seems that the registration pages are still available, so unsuspecting new users could still sign up for the site without realising it’s about to shut. Frustrating.
Some alternatives to Kublax: Yodlee, MoneyDashboard (launching soon), Lovemoney Online Banking
Irony
As @TomSessions pointed out on Twitter, it’s ironic that a site that was designed to help you look after your money failed to look after its own. It looks like any monetisation of the essentially free service was too late in arriving.