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This is the first part in a series of posts on Yodlee, an online personal finance aggregator.

I recently signed up for Yodlee MoneyCenter, a personal finance application that aggregates all of your online bank accounts, allowing you to check your balances, pay bills and track your spending habits.

Yodlee, the company behind the MoneyCenter, has actually been around for some time now, but while many online bankers may not know much about it, they've been using it.

Yodlee develops software that powers online banking applications for financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citigroup, HSBC, Fidelity, E-Trade, Wachovia and Merrill Lynch (see the complete list here).

I recently chatted with Melanie Flanigan, senior director of marketing at Yodlee, about what the company does and their takes on the current state and future of online banking.

Tell our readers a little bit about what Yodlee does.
Yodlee: Yodlee became known for pioneering the concept of "account aggregation" — bringing together disparate pieces on online information (primarily financial information) to create a single, secure, consolidated view for consumers. This information includes things like account balances and recent transactions across multiple accounts, organized into views like "net worth" and "spending reports."

Over time, the Yodlee service has become more interactive, moving from just viewing your information to actually acting on it (paying bills, moving money, monitoring against fraud, etc) to help consumers maximize opportunities, stay in control of their finances, and prevent late fees or overdraft charges from forgotten bills or low account balances.

Yodlee doesn't market its services directly to consumers but rather through trusted financial institutions as an integrated part of heir online banking, bill pay, and wealth management offerings.

How can consumers benefit from using Yodlee's products?
Yodlee: Yodlee's goal for consumers is to help empower them with a simple, centralized and secure way to manage all of their financial tasks (managing expenses, tracking investments, budgeting, paying bills, etc.) — accessible any time, anywhere (both online and via mobile devices).

Yodlee uniquely brings together data from virtually any online source — bank accounts, bills, investments, 401(k), rewards programs, mortgages, etc. We even include home valuations via integration with Zillow.com.

Armed with a holistic financial view, consumers are able to better understand what they have, how they're spending their money, and what they can do to improve their financial health. And, it's all automated