The finance industry has been crunching data for as long as it’s been around, and this is one of the reasons it takes to technology as readily as it does.  When it comes to cloud services in particular, there’s always the matter of security.  But the application of that data is a next step in virtualization and customer service, as banks and other services find more ways to learn from, and benefit the consumer.

Yodlee’s been at the center of this for some time, lending its services to top financial institutions and portals.  It has a centralized solutions system that integrates management, payments and customer acquisition solutions for these big banks, providing its true value around aggregated customer data.  This is on an individualized level, pulling a user’s financial account information to deliver a simple and secure way for the end-user to mange their financial tasks, on the web or even from a mobile device.  Yodlee’s latest application is for H&R Block, just in time for tax season.

With just a month left to file taxes, people are scrambling for the easiest way around this process.  H&R Block is a long-established resource during tax season, and the company’s been angling around a few technologically-enhanced initiatives to increase its visibility and usability.  Having launched a mobile app earlier this year, it’s nice to see H&R Block’s additional project, powered in part by Yodlee.  The new TaxCenter app helps users identify deductions, and then import the information into H&R Block At Home, which has online and offline software products.

“TaxCenter combines the best of H&R Block’s expertise and services with Yodlee’s leading personal financial management and data aggregation capabilities,” said Jason Houseworth, senior vice president, digital business for H&R Block. “The tool makes tax filing easier by identifying and seamlessly importing financial transactions into H&R Block At Home digital tax preparation solutions.”

What’s important about Yodlee’s involvement is its ability to process and securly deliver real-time information, all occurring on the back-end.  Yodlee’s access to mass amounts of data allows it to deliver those next-gen solutions around banks and financial services, specifically towards improved interfaces that make up the consumer experience.  For H&R Block, Yodlee provides a scalable solution, while Yodlee seeks more ways to employee its data–taxes!

“People perceive money in one of two ways–it causes anxiety or uncertainty.  What can we do to take the sting out of managing your financial life?”  Joe Polverari, Yodlee’s Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer starts.  “Taxes is one way, even if it’s only seasonal.  This is something wrought with inefficiency.  Multiple methods around tax filing, dealing with an advisor, etc.  This is a natural fit in cleansing data and delivering it with another set of expertise in converting that data into a tax return process that’s more effective.”

Yodlee starts out by delivering all the data a user has from their banks (statements, available category breakdowns, tax-related documents), and H&R Block breaks it down from there, recognizing and organizing the data for tax-specific purposes.  It’s a system for shared data that results in a single product, enabling a marketplace exchange that benefits the consumer.

In team-ups like this, Yodlee actually functions around a series of applications, which can be used in secession or broken up into pieces that can fit at various points of a third-party process.  This format makes Yodlee somewhat flexible in its abilities to provide and apply data sets pertaining to the financial industry.

To that end, we can expect to see more tax-related apps from Yodlee next year, especially as consumers find more services in this arena.  Creating niche apps that cater to a certain aspect of a consumer’s financial needs is a good starting point, and as big banks seek more ways to improve their customer service around stats and data, Yodlee will be in a better position to power those services.