Test Kublax.com - the new family finances site - and have the chance to win £150

[carriemumsnet]

Kublax.com is a new online service designed to help you manage your family's finances and they're looking for mumsnetters to try it out, offer feedback and have the chance to win £150.

Kublax's service is free, simple to use and allows you to pull together all your finances in one place. Completely hacker-proof and secure, it works best if you bank online. You just plug in your financial data and it automatically categorises where you are spending and divides it up into 45 different areas eg groceries or eating out. You can also create your own specific categories. There are simple budgeting tools and alerts that allow you to plan ahead and monitor your spending or set reminders for yourself and the site also includes helpful links to other money-saving sites.

This product test is open to any mumsnetter who wants to take part and everyone who tests the service and offers feedback on this thread will be entered into a prize draw to win £150.
To take part all you have to do is log on to www.kublax.com, have a play and then answer the following questions

1. What did you find useful about Kublax ?
2. What didn't you like, what didn?t work so well ?
3. What could be improved/added ?
4. Would you recommend it to other Mumsnetters, and why? And if not, why not?
5. Any other comments.

Thanks and good luck

MNHQ

(fluffy bunny bows down to the wisdom of whomovedmychocolate)

I know - I'm quite scared of WMMC now - what do you do to know all this?

1. What did you find useful about Kublax ?

• texts to tell me an account was about to go into overdraft; all info in one place on one page if I had multiple accounts (but I don't); retrospective check on where money has gone

1. What didn't you like, what didn?t work so well ?

• who are they? based in some 2nd floor office in north london holding my passwords? and what do they know about money? no credentials. Feels very american - all those payment reminders, we do them on direct debit anyway
• I'm not sure I really want to know that much abut where my money is going - would rather keep head in sand. all a bit anal.
• comparisons with 'national average' useless - every household is different

1. What could be improved/added ?

• would rather this was downloaded software so more secure; more info on who they are

1. Would you recommend it to other Mumsnetters, and why? And if not, why not?

• would recommend to someone who wanted to see where their money was going and had got into a mess but only if reassured tehy are a reliable company

1. Any other comments.

• website looks clean and neat
• probably something people need to think slowly about and have a go at before trying
• suspect there is a serious group effect here on Mumsnet - all worrying about security when we wouldn't really!

missingtheaction - I don't think it's a group effect actually - most people would be concerned about their personal information in the circs.

Spicemonster - you don't want to know, believe me

BTW missingtheaction, quite a few banks will text you in these circs.

Would reckon on your home 'puter being less secure if you did it all offline btw. You probably don't check security updates on a daily basis or run your 'puter from a server farm with trained, background checked staff, I do, but then I'm a weirdo

Just to introduce myself. I am Tom Symonds the CEO of Kublax and I just felt it important to firstly thank you for your frank feedback so far and secondly to try and bring some more clarity to certain points raised to reassure you.

Although it is fair to say that we do not have the resources of many banks and financial services companies we are extremely well backed by a selection of the UK's top internet investors including ASI, a fund set up by the 4 technologists who invented Skype. Both Sridhar (the founder) and I have many years of internet and financial services experience between us working for leading UK companies - GE Capital, BSkyB, RBS, Credit Suisse and Norwich Union.

You are all right to be sensitive about the security issues. We have invested considerable sums of money in our security infrastructure and it remains our number 1 priority every day. We have also taken legal advice from one of the UK's leading internet legal practices - Orrick. The full detail of our security is explained on the site but I would like to stress the following points to you here

1. Kublax uses bank-level 256-bit SSL encryption to ensure that all communications between your browser and our website are secure

1. The Kublax servers and the Kublax.com website have been certified Hacker Safe by McAfee and are validated daily by a company recognised as a world leader in software security

1. Kublax does not know your bank account or credit card numbers; we only retrieve your transaction data

1. We provide a read-only information service, Kublax does not permit any transactions whatsoever; money cannot be moved through the site

1. Kublax does not store your bank or credit card account credentials (usernames and passwords). These details are immediately encrypted as soon as you give them to us and passed to Yodlee in the US who are the world's leading provider of bank connectivity. If you are interested you can find out more about them at www.yodlee.com

1. You are not in breach your banks T's and C's because the password you give us is immediately encrypted as soon as you input it on the Kublax site. Neither our partner Yodlee nor Kublax ever know what it is and it remains encrypted as long as you use the service. The encrypted password is held in the same secure location that holds the same confidential credentials for a number of the US' leading banks.

The main aim of running a trial with Mumsnet was to get some people registering and using the site so we could learn from the feedback and perhaps look at developing something specific to Mums.

We are still hoping that you might give Kublax a try. For those of you who do not want to connect automatically there is a manual option which you could try that involves a simple upload of a statement from your online bank service.

Thanks
Tom

If the service is free to users Tom, where is ASI getting the return on their investment from please?

Hi Tom, tis good of you to come back. May I suggest you take a look at the archives for the FSA discussions recently - they asked us to product test a binder of financial and budgeting advice? Which will tell you a bit about what our financial concerns are

I find it slightly alarming that you are needing to pass info outside of the EU for encryption - there are perfectly good EU systems IME.

One of the huge problems you will have is that in order to understand what you are doing, you have to teach people about information security. The side effect of doing so is they become more paranoid and I'm not sure what you are saying is enough to assuage their fears.

Thanks for that Tom, unfortunately it does nothing to make me more confident. I understand very very little of the whole internet safety thing, and obviously have no idea who the big companes are that you mention and whether they are any good or not.

I do use internet banking, but only because it is run by a huge bank and has 'LLOYDS' 'NATWEST' or whoever emblazened across the whole thing. Because it is a big name, I trust it. I would trust the Microsoft money programme, but again that is because they are a huge recognisable name.

In you situation, as a very small player in the world of internet banking I'm not sure how you would ever get around that. If you told me that some of the big banks trusted your site, then I guess I would trust it too.

In fact, having waffled for a while, I guess that I don't really care what McSomething 3654bit encryption system you use, I just want some bigger banking corporation (that I have heard of) to say that it is ok, then I would use it.

Hope that makes sense.

Well put WriggleJiggle