What is Connectivity Center?
Connectivity Center is a one-stop solution for bank and brokerage account connection management. It gives you a snapshot of all your connections and their Uptime Scores, helping you to identify and solve issues fast. It's all about being proactive - alerting you about connections with poor Uptime Scores and suggesting when to Revive, Reconnect, or Track Manually.
You can access the Connectivity Center via Settings > Connectivity or directly from your dashboard.
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The story behind Connectivity Center
The complexity of the banking industry's infrastructure, we've faced challenges that required creative solutions.
When we started Kubera, we used Yodlee as our account aggregator. During our private beta tests, we realized that the account connections didn't work as well as we had hoped. Sometimes they connected, and at other times the same bank failed to connect. This issue made us realize the need for a more robust solution. That's when we decided to introduce Plaid as a backup aggregator and have a 'Plan B' flow when the first attempt failed to connect.
Since then, we widened our net, bringing aboard Mastercard, SnapTrade, Lean, Akahu, and Salt Edge. Plus, keep an eye out for MX joining the crew soon! These enhancements aim to improve the coverage and increase the chance of establishing successful connections.
We still faced challenges due to the unreliability of these connections. As a result, we designed the "Revive" and "Reconnect" flows. Revive fixes a connection in error, while Reconnect lets you seamlessly switch aggregators if the current one becomes unstable. We also built an algorithm that smartly picks the best aggregator for an institution based on an 'Uptime Score'.
While we've made strides in bringing down the connection related issues, they are still not foolproof due to the reliance of many financial institutions on legacy technology. Often, it's simpler to manually track a bank or brokerage account than to constantly wrestle with connection errors, which can lead to frustration. It's essential to understand that you will likely have a mix of assets that auto-update and others that require manual tracking. By manually tracking some accounts, you can avoid constant connection troubleshooting, allowing you to appreciate the successful, auto-updating connections rather than focusing solely on the problematic ones.
We realized that it's equally important to acknowledge the accounts that are functioning smoothly, not just the ones experiencing issues. Which brings us to our latest feature: the 'Connectivity Center.'