Only a year ago, account aggregation was touted as the next big thing in Canadian financial services. However, the supposed hot topic in online and personal banking that would allow clients to have access to all their accounts at different institutions has has yet to catch fire.

There have been no big marketing campaigns, and advisors aren’t using it with their clients. In some cases there doesn’t even appear to be a product or service to push. According to one Canadian observer, it could be another year to 18 months before aggregation really catches on.

In the U.S., the response to aggregation appears to have been equally tepid. In fact, a report from Boston-based Forrester Research Inc. suggests companies would be better off to cut their losses and kill the aggregation effort.

The report, primarily directed at U.S. institutions, says adoption rates are low, cross-selling with promises of better advice remain pipe dreams, and early leaders there are quietly discontinuing the service.

The report describes a scene in which U.S. institutions, fearing customer defections if they hesitated to offer aggregated accounts, went charging down the road with first-year “sweetheart deals” in hand from their third-party service providers.

In Canada, companies are pursuing the aggregation market, but with a more measured approach.

Royal Bank was the first to launch an aggregation offering following a year-long pilot project. CIBC launched a limited pilot, and Laurentian has also rolled out an offering. None is actively marketing its aggregation capabilities, but the Royal allows customers who are interested to join, while CIBC is still very much in the test phase.

Guy van Rooyen, senior analyst with Gomez Canada, says in terms of solutions provided, Laurentian currently has the best presentation of aggregation in Canada.

Banks are divided on how valuable aggregation is, or will be, in terms of gains and penetration. Van Rooyen says that both CIBC and Royal, when asked about the value of aggregation, “obviously said it was very valuable and they were seeing significant gains and penetration with their customer bases.”

Royal claims to have numbers to support its case, although it won’t make them public, van Rooyen says, noting the bank is one of the strictest institutions in terms of capital allocation. “They make sure that there’s a return on investment associated with every piece of technology they roll out,” he says. “They’ve done some significant due diligence on it.”

Meanwhile, Bank of Nova Scotia and Bank of Montreal, which have yet to enter the aggregation game, say they don’t see the value in it and can’t justify the expense.

Gomez research shows Canadians have a strong interest in aggregation, but “we have yet to see aggregation technology at the level that will bring consumers online to use it,” van Rooyen says.

In Canada, making aggregated accounts commonplace will depend entirely on the big banks. Forrester, in its U.S. report, recommends institutions bring aggregation in-house as a cost consideration now that third-party deals are expiring. That jibes with Gomez Canada research that asked consumers if they preferred banks or third parties to manage account aggregation. “The resounding answer,” says van Rooyen, “was they prefer their primary bank to maintain and manage that technology.”

Van Rooyen expects it will take 12 to 18 months for aggregation to catch on, but only after banks begin to push the technology and market it to their customer base.