It’s tax day, and that means millions of Americans are scrambling to get their financial houses in order. If you’re like me, managing personal finance information is a tedious chore, often placed behind yard work and bathroom cleaning. Luckily, some companies want to help.
One of those is Balance Financial, a Bellevue startup that’s trying to combine elements of the online financial management service Mint.com with the personal brick-and-mortar touch of H&R Block. Balance just closed out a $2 million funding round from Seattle angel investor Geoff Entress, Finsphere CEO Mike Buhrmann and others. A portion of the new cash was previously reported by GeekWire last June, and we caught up with CEO Devin Miller this week to get an update on the progress of the company.
Started eight years ago as a personal bookkeeping service, the company has morphed and changed over the years as it added new technology offerings. At this point, Miller said that they are rolling out new services to help financial professionals such as CPAs, bookkeepers and and private bankers attract and engage with clients in new ways.
“Balance is aimed at the 1.2 million financial pros providing $50 billion per year in services to consumers in the U.S.,” says Miller. “The technology market for financial professionals is very fragmented and much of the tech is expensive, antiquated and has lacked innovation for years.”
For example, the 14-person company just unveiled a new portfolio reporting service for financial professionals that helps clients track and review financial holdings. It now offers five different solutions: Portfolio Peporting; Cash Flow Reporting; Bill Payment; Client Portal & File Sharing; and Personal Bookkeeping.
With the new funding, Balance has named Stephan Roche — the chief marketing officer at Memory Lane and a former vice president at ShareBuilder — and Will Kessinger — co-founder of Vformation — to its board.
We’ve seen other companies in the personal financial services arena raise cash recently, most notably FutureAdvisor which scored a round last month from Sequoia Capital, Square Chief Operating Offer Keith Rabois and Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman
