MyBudget

Type	Private
Industry	Financial services
Founded	1999
Founder	Tammy Barton
Headquarters	Adelaide, South Australia
Key people	Tammy Barton
Services	Personal Budgeting

MyBudget is an Australian financial services company based in Adelaide, South Australia, which provides personal budget management services.

History

MyBudget was founded in 1999^[1] by Australian entrepreneur and personal finance expert Tammy Barton. During one of her first jobs at a legal firm, Barton noticed there was a lack of assistance for people struggling with the damaging effects of financial stress. Using this as inspiration for MyBudget, Barton decided to help them herself and built the business from her kitchen table from the southern suburbs of Adelaide.^[2] Barton’s main motivation was to help individuals improve their financial position by formulating a tailored budget and by managing their finances on their behalf.^[3] The first office was located in Adelaide, South Australia.

Product

MyBudget provides a personal budgeting service. The service analyses a client's finances, including income, expenses and debt. The budgeting system works by ranking each bill in order of priority categories, from those which are the highest, such as living expenses and mortgage repayments, to those with a lower priority.

Criticism and malware

In December 2013, MyBudget was named in a national current affairs television report as "profiteering at the expense of people who are struggling with debt".^[4] MyBudget issued a statement responding to the report, claiming that "the segment was an unbalanced attack on our industry and that many of the comments made are inaccurate".^[5]

In 2017, MyBudget was the object of a class action due to withholding interest accrued by clients.^[6] In September 2018, the courts dismissed the proceedings, with Judge Lee stating that "MyBudget obtains and suffers the pluses and minuses of the bank accounts necessary to discharge its obligations to provide the services," and, in addition, "The Provision did not cause an overall detriment, financial or otherwise, to clients".^[7]

In May 2020, MyBudget was the confirmed target of a malware attack as a result of the company quickly moving its employees onto work-from-home arrangements amid the coronavirus outbreak.^[8] Automatic transfers were interrupted, but progressed manually. Customers expressed concerns as to whether the significant personal data held by MyBudget had been leaked or hacked.^[9] Later, hackers claimed to have stolen data from MyBudget using ransomware and threatened to publish it unless paid.^[10] During the ransomware attack "users were unable to view their account balance for at least seven days."^[11] In a statement to the media on 15 May 2020, MyBudget stated that there was "no credible evidence that significant data was accessed or will be misused [h]owever we can't rule this out and are taking all cautionary measures".^[8]

References