Kublax shuts

At the end of 2008 I mentioned a a UK based online financial management tool much like mint.com over in the states. I thought it was a great idea and used it for over 6 months to manage and budget some of my accounts. I stopped using it eventually as it couldn’t work with some of my accounts and there was no sign of change. Shame then that I got the the below email from them this morning.

Dear Kublax Customer

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.

Kublax’s partner, Yodlee, will be deleting all user data, including online banking details from its servers. Once deleted no further information will be gathered and stored for Kublax customers. Your transactional data will also be completely erased from our servers by close of business on Friday 19th February. We will not pass your data on to any third parties.

If you wish to contact Sridhar or I you can reach us at the following email address – kublaxenquiry@googlemail.com

Many thanks again for your support and we hope that Kublax was able to help you make slightly better sense of your finances over the last year or so.

Tom and Sridhar

In the meantime there have been developments with sites that offer similar services. A company called moneydashboard.com has launched (currently in limited beta) here in the UK with what seems like lots of investment. I’m lucky enough to have an invite and it all works as promised using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. Unfortunately at the current moment it only works in IE and not Firefox or Chrome which I use.

Once I have more time to play with the system and it comes out of beta I’ll review it as I can see sites like this helping consumers better manage their money.