The Banktastic IT & Security Feed

Banking 2.0: no clear ROI [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Fri Sep 12 09:53:00 -0400 2008

First, I invite you to read my post entitled "Banking 2.0: 10 "good" reasons not to embrace social media".
I listed the 10 reasons I hear the most frequently against social media in the banking industry.

My goal is to convince my peers that banks must embrace social media and web 2.0 now.

It gives us a unique opportunity to connect not only with our clients, but the whole market. It gives us the opportunity to show we listen and we care. It will help us drive customer advocacy.

I will publish a video response for every single reason I listed. Please find below my response to the reason around the ROI for social media projects.

No clear ROI

Contribute... and challenge me!
What do you think a my video (content, format)?
I created the initial post to start a discussion. An interactive online discussion.
Please don't hesitate to leave a comment and add a new reason to the list: challenge me! I will post a video response for every single additional reason.

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* 10 "good" reasons not to embrace social media
* Video - The 4 kinds of social media projects
* Christophe Langlois, Founder of Visible-Banking.com

Expensify Launches Decoupled Credit/Debit Card Using Prepaid Model [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Fri Sep 12 01:59:32 UTC 2008

Like Rate Surfer, which we wrote about yesterday, Expensify launched its new employee-expense management system from the TechCrunch50 DemoPit this week.

The San Francisco-based startup (note 1) combines a payment card with a web-based expense manager and uses cellphone cameras to upload pictures of receipts to match against purchases. It's a banking triple play: card, online, and mobile.

The target market is smaller businesses that want to automate expense report preparation, approval, and reimbursement to their employees.

How it works
The heart of Expensify is a prepaid decoupled credit card. I know that doesn't makes sense, here's how it works:

Sign up for an Expensify MasterCard prepaid debit card.
Load it with value from any credit or debit card, Visa, MasterCard, or American Express.
Make purchases with the Expensify MasterCard.
As each purchase clears, it lowers the prepaid balance, triggering an automatic "top off" charge of an equal amount to the consumer's credit card thereby returning the prepaid balance back to the original level.

Metabank is the issuer, here's the terms and conditions.

Analysis
At first blush Expensify sounds pretty amazing. An expense management card that rides on top of your regular card, with mobile and web-based integration. Brilliant, until you start thinking about costs. There's that pesky thing called interchange. What Expensify has done is create two card transactions instead of one, doubling the amount of interchange paid.

To cover the extra interchange and create some revenue for itself, Expensify levees a 3% transaction fee on the cardholder. Although, the card is otherwise relatively fee-free, that's a significant surcharge.

Why would anyone pay 3% extra in order to use the Expensify card when they already have a credit card? The company believes that small businesses will pay the fee in order to get the expense manger features and to help employees separate business expenses from personal ones. Businesses could have multiple Expensify cards tied to different category of expenses (see screenshot below).

A business with just $1000/mo in expenditures would pay $360 per year. In addition, the business would tie up several hundred dollars in a prepaid account because cardholders can only make charges that do not exceed the prepaid balance held in the Expensify account.

I think the expense management concept is good, especially with the mobile receipt integration. But it's just too expensive in its current format. The founders should try to move to an ACH-based "topping off" process and remove the transaction fees.

But regardless of how this specific product performs, the integration of payments, online and mobile is a huge trend. If Expensify is nimble enough, they may be able to ride the wave.

Expensify homepage (10 Sep 2008)

Note:
1. Since I didn't see contact info on their website, here's what the founders provided at TechCrunch50: Expensify, 548 Market St. #61434, San Francisco, CA 94104, Phone: 801.745.9064

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mFoundry iPhone Mobile Banking Solution [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Wed Sep 10 20:38:00 -0400 2008

Today, mFoundry announced the launch of their iPhone mobile banking solution. Plus, don't forget that on June 30th Bank of America made a strategic investment in mFoundry. This will be a nice fit with the iPhone representing 25% of Bank of America's mobile banking user base. Learn More >>

My Best Interest Announces Rate Surfer from TechCrunch50 DemoPit [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Wed Sep 10 07:53:30 UTC 2008

In addition to the 51 companies chosen in advance to demo at TechCrunch's annual conference, there are 120 more companies (note 1) in the DemoPit. The DemoPit is an area outside the main hall where the companies that didn't make the final cut to be on stage have a table where they can showcase their companies to attendees. And one lucky company, the one that collects the most tokens from attendees, will appear as company number 52 on stage in the last session tomorrow.

There were several financial services companies in the DemoPit Monday including Billeo, Expensify, and LoanKrunch. Today, there was just one, Rate Surfer from My Best Interest. Although, the service will not go live until its debut at Finovate next month, the company showed it to the public today for the first time. It also added a downloadable demo program to its website if you want a sneak peek (note 2).

What's it does
Rate Surfer is a credit card manager. It uses account aggregation technology to import balance and rate data from all your credit cards. It then uses that data to help users initiate and track credit card balance transfers across their credit cards. Although, there are still some rough edges to work out, it could potentially save users hundreds of dollars in interest every year by helping them take advantage of transfer opportunities.

Main Rate Surfer page from its demo software (9 Sep 2008)

Notes:
1. There are 120 total companies, but each gets just 12-hour day in the DemoPit, so there are 40 companies each day. Although, the Monday companies were given an extra day due to a wifi outage that plagued the hall much of Monday. In addition, to these companies, there were 33 exhibitor tables and 22 TechCrunch alumni with tables, including Cake Financial and last year's winner Mint.

2. It's a 67MB download.

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Video makes the naked bank [BankerVision]

Wed Sep 10 03:16:25 -0400 2008

Last night, I was part of a panel debate on whether "video will be the next channel revolution in banks", at the Financial Services Club. As usual, it was conducted under Chatham House Rules, so I'm not going to name names here.

I think it was probably amusing to everyone to have the innovation guy take the negative view. I actually don't think video will be that much of a big deal.

But there were a couple of very good point from those who think it is a big deal.

The one that caught my attention was "video makes the naked bank".

The basic premise is this. If you can see into a call centre, getting a view of what goes on behind the scenes, might it make banks more responsive to customers? Might it encourage a level of transparency that presently doesn't exist? Ultimately, wouldn't video make the customer experience better because of the increased fidelity of the communication?

There were plenty of video and network vendors there who thought these were killer arguments.

But I have a different view. Firstly, I don't think the largest part of our new customer demographic - the ones who do Internet as main channel, for example - are all that fussed about having a two way visual communication. Their channel choice is as self service as it comes. They go out of their way to avoid any face to face contact with their branch.

What about the people who presently do go to the branch? These, presumably, are the ones who would benefit from greater access to expertise that comes from the "on demand" features of video: the idea that you can call in an expert over the video link from anywhere if no one local is available. Now, if a customer makes a channel choice to have personal contact, what are the chances there will be delight when we put him or her in front of a video screen? I think not much.

Anyway, just what is the business case for video? Does it result in new product sales? Does all this on-demand expertise reduce customer churn? Who can know, because there just aren't all that many banks doing it at the moment. There is all this anecdotal evidence, apparently, that customer satisfaction is up, that product sales are up, that every metric of interest to a banker is up. But no-one has shown me any evidence that really stands up.

Here's my thinking on this. If the business case for remote video advice stood up, a similar case for remote voice advice would also have stood up. Yet, so many banks, who are fully equipped with telephones, don't do remote voice advice. Why?

And here is my last point. It would hardly be all that simple to make the bank end of the video link represent a bank's brand values perfectly all the time. Consider this: it is a call centre, and it is two AM. The staff have worked maybe six hours of an 8 hour shift. They are tired, and they probably don't look perfect. They most certainly aren't all starch, shine and makeup.

Do I think customers would care? Of course they would. They are the same people who changed banks because they didn't like accents on telephones.

Banking 2.0: User Generated Content (UGC) is too risky [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Wed Sep 10 00:49:00 -0400 2008

First, I invite you to read my post entitled "Banking 2.0: 10 "good" reasons not to embrace social media".
I listed the 10 reasons I hear the most frequently against social media in the banking industry.

My goal is to convince my peers that banks must embrace social media and web 2.0 now.

It gives us a unique opportunity to connect not only with our clients, but the whole market. It gives us the opportunity to show we listen and we care. It will help us drive customer advocacy.

I will publish a video response for every single reason I listed. Please find below my response to my all time favourite reason "UGC is too risky".

Social Media, UGC... It is too risky!

Mobile Text Banking - 5 Things You May Not Know [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Tue Sep 09 20:50:00 -0400 2008

Here are 5 things you may or may not know about a mobile text banking application.

1) Short codes are not purchased. They are leased from the Common Short Code Administration (CSCA). "Selected" codes cost $12,000/year. "Random" codes cost $6,000/year.

2) Have you ever wondered why many banks do not support transfers via text banking? The answer: Not all carriers will approve/support the functionality.

3) Which words/terms must you accept as a clients request to "unsubscribe?"
* Cancel, Cancel All, Stop, Stop All, Quit, Quit All, Unsubscribe, Unsubscribe All, End, End All

4) Whether running in-house or through a vendor you must utilize an aggregator. A few of the top players (in alphabetical order) are: Clickatell, mBlox, Sybase, and Verisign.

5) The carriers insist that you follow the MMA "Consumer Best Practices." Plus, be sure to ask your aggregator/vendor for a copy of the supplemental requirements provided by the carriers.

New Mobile Banking Research from Fiserv [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Tue Sep 09 08:55:00 -0400 2008

To access the full mobile banking presentation from Fiserv/Checkfree click here.

Fiserv and M-Com Team Up [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Tue Sep 09 08:27:00 -0400 2008

Steve Bills of the American Banker announced this morning that Fiserv and M-Com have formed a partnership to offer mobile banking to 200 of the largest financial institutions in the nation. This is the now the second major deal for M-Com which is head quartered in New Zealand. Earlier this year Washington Mutual launched an SMS banking solution powered by the M-Com platform. According to the story the joint venture will offer a 3 channel solution consisting of browser, SMS, and downloadable. Read the full story here.

Shryk Launches iThryv, Online Banking for Youth, at TechCrunch50 [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Tue Sep 09 08:36:20 UTC 2008

Two huge tech conferences opened today in California with 124 companies launching new products this week in front of a combined audience of more than 2,500 (see note 1). At DEMOfall in San Diego, 72 companies are launching new products today and tomorrow. In San Francisco, 52 companies launch at TechCrunch50 today through Wednesday.

Eight of the 124 companies are related to financial services:

DEMOfall: Rudder, GreenSherpa, BizEquity (Advanta)
Techcrunch50: iThryv (below), StockMood, PersonalRIA, exchangeP, and Emerginvest

We'll cover several of these companies, plus several in the TechCrunch50 demo pit, starting with iThryv.

iThryv kicks of TechCrunch50
I made it down from Seattle this morning just in time to catch the first demo. And I'm glad I got up so early because it just so happened to be the only personal finance/banking-related finalist. Oklahoma City-based Shryk, kicked off TechCrunch50 (note 2) by unveiling its online banking platform aimed at the 12-to-20 year-old crowd. The new service is called iThryv and it will be marketed directly to banks and credit unions who will customize and brand it for their own customer base.

iThryv will be integrated directly to the bank, or its core processor, so that real-time banking data can be displayed in various widgets. In to account info, iThryv also includes the following modules and features:

Goal-oriented savings, including rewards for reaching milestones
A spending & savings score that does for savings what a credit score does for loans
Make $ area where budding entrepreneurs can learn more about starting a business
Learn area for financial education

The company has a two-fold approach to getting iThryv into the market:

Licensing the platform to banks for a fixed fee plus per-user fees
Giving the platform to schools to incorporate into their curriculum

According to the founders, the service is currently being considered by several financial institutions, but it is not yet available online.

iThryv homepage (8 Sep 2008)

iThryv savings score graphed (8 Sep 2008)

iThryv "Make $" tab (8 Sep 2008)

Notes:
1. TechCrunch reported approximately 1,700 attendees, while DEMOfall had 800.

2. iThryv was originally scheduled to present third, but were moved up to first when Ashton Kutcher was late for his scheduled demo of his startup Blah Girls.

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Banking still outranks Facebook [The Better Banking Blog]

Tue Sep 09 01:55:00 -0400 2008

Last month we put out a media release highlighting consumers are still spending much more time banking online than updating their Facebook page.

You can view the full release here.

Ash Trotter from Tektime Radio in Melbourne took the time to investigate, and in this podcast of the show we discuss everything from banking in Second Life to whether Australian banks are secure.

I enjoy doing consumer media because it's a good reminder of what people really care about. Sometimes we get so caught up in our little world of banking we forget there's a whole raft of people out there that only think about banking if it stands in their way or makes their life easier.

the EFMA invites Christophe Langlois, Founder of Visible-Banking.com, to speak at Online Financial Services 2008 in Athens [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Tue Sep 09 00:53:00 -0400 2008

It is a pleasure to participate to EFMA's brilliant Online Financial Services event for the second year in a row. I want to thank Pol Navarro, Head of Innovation and Distribution Channels at Banco Sabadell, who recommended me to Philippe Van Fraechem, Programme Director at EFMA.

I believe it is the best event focused on Online Banking I ever attended: the quality of the audience is amazing (almost entirely of senior executives from the leading European banks, as well as more and more banks from the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region), and the presentations are insightful and "hands-on".

And Jim Bruene's Finovate days are the best events in Online Finance: it is the best opportunity to meet the most innovative startups around.

Key speakers
This year, the line up looks excellent again. Well done Philippe!

Please find below the list of key speakers.
* Tony de Bree, Senior management consultant separation and integration at ABN AMRO (Belgium): I contacted Tony on Linkedin a few weeks ago. Tony is a consultant who works on many innovative projects online.Tony wrote a few books like virtualisation in banking. I invite you to check Tony’s website.

* Tim Collins, SVP-Experiential Marketing at Wells Fargo (US): Tim is one of the most high-profile, and influential social media evangelists in the banking industry. Wells Fargo is by far the most innovative bank in the social media space. I invite you to check my video on Wells Fargo 2.0.

* Barbara Roels, Head of Product Management Save & Invest at Fortis (Belgium): I met Barbara at the event in Barcelona last year. She works with Catherine Ossemerct who launched Join2Grow.biz, the innovative social network for European Entrepreneurs, back in Feb 2007. Barbara is also the owner of Prompt! Speech Applications.

* Themos Vihos, Alpha Bank (Greece)

* Lars Gatschke, BEUC - Federation of German Consumer Organisations (Germany)

* Dennis Pereira, Head of E-Commerce and Outbound Marketing at SNS Bank (Netherlands)
I had the chance to meet Dennis last year in Barcelona where he won a best of the show award.
Dennis is an excellent presenter, and he was instrumental in the launch of most of SNS Bank recent innovative online initiatives such as their online mortgage advice service using video conferencing, document sharing and online chat. I very much looking forward to catching up with Dennis.

* Shin Kusunoki, Corporate Vice President, Center for Financial Technology Research at Nomura Research Institute (Japan)

* Annika King, Hansabank

* Catherine Palmieri, ex Managing Director, Citibank Direct / Citibank.com at Citi (USA): please check Catherine's website to find out more about her.

* Lukas Gant, Head of Customer Relationship Management at bwin Interactive Entertainment AG (Austria)
* Peter Hoitinga, Marketing manager at Ditzo (Netherlands): please check Peter's blog to find out more about him.

* Christophe Langlois, Founder of Visible-Banking.com (UK)

* Mark Rammond, Senior Digital Brand Marketing Manager at Nationwide Building Society (UK)

* Tal Shlasky, E-Banking & Call Center Division Manager at Bank Hapoalim (Israel)

* Meltem �ora, Akbank

* Christo Vrey, Managing Executive : Digital Channels at Absa Bank (South Africa)

* Massimo Cicardo, BNL (Italy)

* Constantine Stivaros, Senior Manager at Piraeus Bank (Greece):Piraeus bank won the Innovation Award last year for their Instant Cash service which gives their customer the immediate way to send and collect cash from Piraeus Bank ATMs without a card. I invite to check two additional innnovative services: easypay and winlife.

Please note there are only three speakers from last year:
* Dennis Pereira, Head of Online Sales - SNS Bank, Netherlands
* Barbara Roels, Head of Remote and One to One Channels - Fortis Bank, Belgium
* myself ;)

Conference overview: "Growing channels, growing challenges"
I invite you to visit the conference website for more information.

The importance of conducting business through online channels (including the Internet and mobile services) continues to grow, bringing with it new technologies and new functionalities. These have had an impact on customer behaviour and expectations.

The conference will also look at issues such as:
* What is the best business model for direct online channels? Could examples from other sectors be applied to the financial sector?
* How can banks use new technologies to create richer customer interactions? What impact do Web 2.0 social networks have on financial services?
* How can online channels be made safer?

Special interest
I very much look forward to attend to Tony's presentation on "How Web 2.0 can help large financial institutions through the current crisis" and Tim's presentation on "Natural selection in media...if Charles Darwin had a blog". I love this title.

I also look forward to participating to the session 2 on Thursday 6 November.
Please find below the topics we will cover:
• How to encourage customers to use online channels and for which functions? How to help advise customers in their use of online channels?
• How to integrate the Internet channel into the multichannel approach to maximize both customer satisfaction and sales?
• How can banks use new technologies to create richer customer interactions? What impact do Web 2.0 socialnetworks have on financial services? What about usability and design, online video, account aggregation,…

Metavante (Monitise) Signs eCom [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Mon Sep 08 21:23:00 -0400 2008

"Metavante, a leading provider of banking and payments technology, today announced Corporate Network eCom, LLC (eCom) has named Metavante Corporation its provider of mobile banking and payments solutions and will resell Metavante Mobile Financial Services, powered by Monitise Americas. eCom, a majority-owned subsidiary of U.S. Central, provides electronic financial services to the Corporate Credit Union Network, which in turn serves the nation’s nearly 8,400 consumer credit unions. Monitise Americas is the mobile banking and payments joint-venture between Metavante Corporation and Monitise plc, the global leader in the provision of mobile banking services." Continue Reading >>

The power of a crowd [BankerVision]

Mon Sep 08 04:29:03 -0400 2008

I am having something of a epiphany moment myself here. And, frankly, I am surprised at myself. You see, I made the mistake of doubting that crowds can do really powerful things. This, despite the fact, that my team and I have been preaching this message for over a year, and the result has been we're in the last stages of deploying social media here at the bank.

Let me backtrack a few steps.

I have spent the last three weeks at home writing Innovation and the Future-proof bank. My deadline is fast approaching, so I thought I'd best give myself some time to really knock over a lot of the writing. To those of you I've been on the phone to with respect to case studies, by the way, thank you very much.

Anyway, all this time at home let me see just how poorly a big corporation can do compared to a crowd.

We are a Microsoft home, you see. There are Microsoft laptops, mobile phones, and even a Microsoft Media centre driven television. I suppose this has to do with the fact that I once worked at Microsoft, so it was easy to acquire all these things, and, in fact, it made sense to do so.

So I have had to put up with three weeks of constant complaints that our phones weren't, actually, always picking up calls. You expect that on a Microsoft phone from time to time, but it isn't until you have to hear the constant complaining that you really believe how irritating it is. At work, I have a voicemail service that goes straight to SMS, so I don't really notice the performance of Windows Mobile.

In order to calm that down, we replaced all our Windows Mobile devices with iPhones. You can't believe the household bliss that resulted, and I went happily back to my writing. Power of crowds: iPhone has a Linux buried deeply inside it, which is an operating system built by lots of people on a volunteer basis.

But the quiet was not to be. You see, the Media Centre doesn't really work very well. It does all these strange things, like dropping sound and failing to receive TV. And this on a fresh install with all the latest updates.

When I was watching about 30 minutes of TV a night, I didn't see the problems. Being at home over the holidays let me hear first hand the howls of frustration. So I replaced that with a new media centre, hand written with love by a crowd and running on Linux. Perfection.

Back to the writing, and I heave a deep sigh of relief. Again, the quiet was not to be. The laptops. Stopped. Working. Again.

Emboldened by my successes with Open Source, I resurrected a laptop with so little capability it could barely run Windows 2000, and installed Linux on that too. And guess what? It worked like a dream, so well, in fact, that I continued my writing on that and stopped using my very high end work laptop with every single possible gadget running Vista.

In the space of a week, almost all our Microsoft devices are gone. And so has most of the household angst.

Here is a set of computer technology that was built without any grand corporate oversight. It just evolved. And my mistake was failing to really, really believe that crowd based things could be as good as "the bought ones".

I have learned a valuable lesson: people will build what they want to use for themselves, as long as the conditions are right to do so.

We've been tracking a trend at the bank we call Generation-C, the generation that wants to Create. These are the people who write blogs, who mash up applications to create new ones, who contribute to forums and put themselves out there. They take a car and customise it to within an inch of its life. Or melt the antenna out of their contactless travel cards so they can attach it something more convenient than their wallets.

What might the power of crowds create if we let them loose on banking products and services?

Because if these Generation-C folk can create a better operating system for free than the folks at Redmond with billions to spend on R&D, what might fantastic things might Generation-C do for financial services?

The Visible Banking Page on Facebook: New Fans (21 - 30) & Recent Activity [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Mon Sep 08 02:38:00 -0400 2008

The Visible Banking Page on Facebook
I am delighted to see such a promising take off of the number of fans. Twenty days after the soft launch, the page now counts 58 fans.

I believe the success of any Social Media initiative is linked with your ability to engage with your community and urge them to contribute.
It is critical to REWARD your members, your fans. Rewarding could mean many things such as producing exclusive content, or giving visibiliy / exposure to your contributors. I intend to do both on the Visible Banking Page.

Please find below the names and a short description of my Fans number 21 to 30 (sorted by chronological order):
21. Joris Huijbregts, Senior interaction designer at Info.nl (Netherlands): Joris mentioned on his profile that he is currently "working on a project for a major bank in the Netherlands..." I invite you to check Joris' blog.

22. Aliza Mor, Conference Producer at Marcus Evans (USA): I met Aliza at Online Retail Banking Services 2008 in May in New York. I was invited not only to speak but also to the chairman of the two-day conference. Following the success of the event, Aliza invited me to participate to another event in Miami, but I couldn't make it. I believe Aliza is now working on Marcus Evans' Innovative Payment Strategies event.

23. Iciar Mart�n, E-business Manager at BBVA (Spain): Iciar is working on new digital business models for BBVA. He is a member of the "Centro de Innovaci�n BBVA" group on Linkedin

24. Jean-Christophe Capelli, Co-Founder at FriendsClear (France): I first met Jean-Christophe a few days before the first ever Finovate in New York. We had dinner in Manhattan. Jean-Christophe is passionate about social lending, and he recently co-founded FriendsClear. I invite you to check JC's blog in French.

25. Andy Berlind, Sponsorship Consultant at Wells Fargo (USA): Andy works for the innovative US bank Wells Fargo. I invite you to check my video on Wells Fargo 2.0. No wonder Andy is connected to his colleagues Tim Collins and Ed Terpening.

26. Sally Herrington, Vice President e-Business at GTE Federal Credit Union (USA): Sally is actively involved in online banking and personal finance management projects.

27. Tuomas Toivonen, Co-Founder at Scred (Finland): Scred is a "peer-to-peer financial service". I invite you to check Tuomas' blog.

28. Panos Kontopoulos, Business Unit Manager at paperplane (Greece): I invite you to check Panos' blog in Greek, "Mental block".

29. Denis Vacher, new means of payment at Orange (France): Denis worked at Cedicam for 11 years. He surely worked with one of my friend, Christian F-E. I invite you to check Denis' blog.

30. Eric Di Benedetto, Angel Investor at Active Starts (USA): Eric has invested in many innovative companies such as Lending Club and ClairMail.

Posted items
I posted 12 items so far. please find below the latest 3 items:
* Finextra: Pre-paid outfit Mint targets Facebook gamers
* Fiserv MyMoney Banking Application Built on Facebook Platform WinsThe Banker Technology Awards 2008
* Media Hunter: Social Media Success Stories: Bryan Inch, RaboPlus

Don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Reviews
There is still no review. Could you please take a few minutes to review my Facebook Page?

Discussion Board
I invite you to share your views on Facebook, and contribute to the first three topics:
* Business Networking: Is Facebook really threatening up Linkedin? (3 posts)
* How important is it for a bank to be on Facebook? (5 posts)
* What would you like to find on the Visible Banking page? (1 post)

Thanks to Aden for his contribution to the Facebook vs Linkedin discussion!

Video challenge: 10 "good" reasons not to embrace social media!
I invite you to read my recent post entitled "Banking 2.0: 10 "good" reasons not to embrace social media".
I listed the 10 reasons I hear the most frequently against social media in the banking industry.

My goal is to convince my peers that banks must embrace social media and web 2.0 now.
I created this post to start a discussion. An interactive online discussion.
Please don't hesitate to leave a comment and add a new reason to the list: challenge me! I will post a video response for every single additional reason.

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Banking 2.0: 10 "good" reasons not to embrace social media
* Launch of the Visible Banking Page on Facebook
* Video - the 4 kinds of Social Media projects

Mobile Banking Updates - Sept 7 [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Sun Sep 07 20:08:00 -0400 2008

Wells Fargo Enhances CEO Mobile Service for Corporate Customers

"Wells Fargo is announcing enhancements to its CEO Mobile service, a browser-based mobile banking service for its corporate banking customers that remains unique among major financial institutions in the US. Users of CEO Mobile can now initiate and approve federal tax wires and see which self administration dual control items they can act on from their mobile devices." Learn More >>

UW Credit Union offers mobile banking
"The UW Credit Union has a new mobile banking service that is targeted at on-the-move students. More than 4,000 members statewide have taken advantage of the new cellular banking tool." Learn More >>

Banking 2.0: social networking, we have already tried! [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Sun Sep 07 12:38:52 -0400 2008

First, I invite you to read my post entitled "Banking 2.0: 10 "good" reasons not to embrace social media".
I listed the 10 reasons I hear the most frequently against social media in the banking industry.

My goal is to convince my peers that banks must embrace social media and web 2.0 now.

It gives us a unique opportunity to connect not only with our clients, but the whole market. It gives us the opportunity to show we listen and we care. It will help us drive customer advocacy.

I will publish a video response for every single reason I listed. Please find below my response to one of my favourite reasons: "we have already tried... It doesn't work!".

We have already tried

Person-to-Person (P2P) Lending Update [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Thu Sep 04 22:38:00 UTC 2008

Now that we are well past the mid-point of 2008, it's a good time to look at where we are with one of the most talked about online financial subjects of the decade: person-to-person or social lending.

Currently, there are two U.S. companies actively originating unsecured, multi-purpose P2P loans (note 1):

Prosper: Through July, the leader in the market is running 10% ahead of its 2007 loan-origination pace. The company has funded $55 million and is on pace to do just under $100 million for the year. Website traffic is up 15% compared to a year ago (see graph below) and through July there have been 13% more loan listings (see previous coverage here, Finovate 2007 Best of Show video here; monthly volume reports here).
Zopa: The company, which isn't technically person-to-person (the loans are originated by six credit union partners), but definitely has a social aspect to its loan program, has not revealed any numbers, but they have 475 loans listed on its "browse all borrowers page." Assuming, average loan size of $8000 to $9000, they are doing less than $1 million per month. Zopa is using Google AdWords to pitch "instant approval" with a credit score of 640+ (see screenshot below), an aggressive marketing move, especially combined with the 8.49% APR touted on the landing page (see screenshot below; previous coverage here, FinovateStartup 2008 Best of Show video here).

In addition, there are three more P2P lenders that appear very close to launching or relaunching:

Lending Club: The company, launched in May 2007, has been essentially closed to new business since March as they retooled its loans into securities for regulatory reasons. However, the company is scheduled to present at our Oct. 14 Finovate conference, implying that they will be out of their quiet period by then (previous coverage here, Finovate 2007 video here).
Loanio: The startup appears to finally be very close to launching based on an a Sep. 3rd email sent to its house list announcing the launch "in just a few weeks" adding in parenthesis (yes, we mean it this time!). The company will likely be the first to offer a co-borrower loan application (previous coverage here; Finovate Startup video here).
Pertuity Direct: The newest competitor in the space is Pertuity Direct which we wrote about last week. Its website claims a Sep. 15 launch and we look forward to seeing their first public demo at Finovate on Oct. 14.

Finally, there are also several companies looking to launch P2P services in 2008 or 2009, including Globefunder, Community Lend (Canada) and one we just heard about today Swap-A-Debt.

Forecast revision
Last December we published our second detailed Online Banking Report on Person-to-Person Lending. In that report, we predicted just under $200 million in originations this year. However, due to the inactive period at Lending Club, the delay in Loanio's launch, and the more conservative approach by Prosper lenders, we are lowering the 2008 forecast by 25%, with an expected total of $135 to $150 million for the year as follows:

Prosper ($95 to $105 million)
Lending Club ($25 to $30 million)
Zopa ($5 to $10 million)
Loanio ($1 to $5 million)
Pertuity Direct ($1 to $5 million)

P2P lending traffic from Compete (July 2007 through July 2008)

Zopa AdWords ad on "loanio" search
(4 Sep 2008, 1 PM PDT from Seattle IP address)

Landing page (4 Sep 2008, link here)

Notes:
1. There are also specialists involved in the student loan piece (GreenNote and Fynanz) along with Virgin Money and Loanback which help with person-to-person loan documentation and servicing.

2. Top-right graphic from April 2008 ABC News segment on Lending Club and person-to-person lending.

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Banking 2.0: 10 "good" reasons not to embrace social media [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Thu Sep 04 17:04:56 -0400 2008

In the last 15 months, I had the opportunity to participate to many industry leading conferences in the US and in Europe. I am always delighted to share my vision and my passion for social media with my peers.

Fact is there are still too few bankers who get social media and web 2.0. And there are still too few social media champions and evangelists in the banking industry.

Social media is not a big threat to the banks, it is a Great opportunity to connect with people and show we care. During my presentations, I use the same words over and over again: customer advocacy, transparency, honesty, engagement, Reward.

But is it enough to convince the whole industry? Probably not. I decided to adopt a different approach. I plan to identify all the reasons not to embrace social media. I identified 10 "good" reasons so far, but it is just a start.

I invite you to contribute: please feel free to leave a comment and flag any additional reasons!

10 "good" reasons not to embrace social media now
1. We have already tried!
2. UGC is too risky
3. No clear ROI
4. Limited Marketing budget, limited resources
5. Only good for small financial institutions and direct banks
6. The mighty Press Office and L&C departments
7. Personal branding & external blogging: loosing our best people
8. Wait! Our new online channel will deliver everything... eventually
9. Intranet 2.0 & Enteprise Search: confidential documents made visible
10. Focus on the basics: investment portfolio, single view of the customer...

Video reponse
I plan to shoot a short video for every single "good" reason listed in this post (including the ones you flagged in your comments).

My goal is to challenge all of them, and demonstrate we don't have a choice anymore: social media must be part of your digital media / online marketing strategy.

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Video - Focus on Wells Fargo 2.0
* Video - The 4 kinds of social media projects
* Christophe Langlois, Founder of Visible-Banking.com

That NFC trial in London [BankerVision]

Thu Sep 04 03:03:19 -0400 2008

The conclusion of the mobile phone wallet trial in London, apparently, is that mobile phone payments are highly desirable for consumers. According to FinExtra, the majority - 78% - of the 500 participants said they would be interested in using the service if it was available. And 22% said because they could pay for the Tube by handset they used public transport more.

Now, I, for one, am not surprised that people like the service. YouTube has been running a video for a while now that shows how to dissolve an Oyster (travel) card in acetone and fix the resulting chip to your mobile or anything else you want. I've also heard stories, by the way, of London Underground staff refusing to allow people to travel if they have such a modded version of the card.

But regardless, the point is people are actually hacking their plastic to get it out of their wallets. The same thing will probably happen to non-travel plastic as well as soon as more contactless readers are installed on ATMs and at the point of sale.

Here is the key question for me though. Would I give up my handset - presently an Apple iPhone - which I use for lots of different things, to get some basically functional payments enabled handset instead? Of course not. The first requirement for me is that my choice of handset is available with contactless. I will not be switching to mobile phone contactless otherwise.

So many people have suggested that the key speed bump for NFC and contactless adoption is going to be the availability of places to pay. Well, of course I agree with that, but I'd suggest that an even bigger one is going to be getting consumers to switch handsets just so they can have mobile payment functionality. For myself, I'll just have a contactless card in my wallet and use that instead.

What is needed is that all handsets have the capability for NFC. I'm not giving up my iPhone (and neither would I have given up my Windows Mobile device before this). What I might do, though, is dissolve my contactless card in acetone and stick the remaining chip to the back of my iPhone.

And what, actually, would be the functional difference if I did?

RBA closely watching project M@MBO [The Better Banking Blog]

Thu Sep 04 01:40:00 -0400 2008

Reserve Bank head of payments policy Michele Bullock has told Online Banking Review the bank is “watching closely” the M@MBO project currently being considered by banking members of bill payments scheme BPAY.

The proposal would see individuals register for their own BPAY code which could be used to facilitate payments. Consumers could then port their number from bank to bank without the need to re-establish direct debits or credits, and use it to enable online payments.

Questioned by Online Banking Review at yesterday’s Banktech summit, Bullock told the audience the project is a very interesting test case for industry co-operation. “Some say you don’t need any co-operation to get innovation … We don’t agree.”

Commonwealth Bank credit cards GM Stephen Karpin threw his support behind the scheme. “The M@MBO project is a great customer value proposition so we think it’s something we should get behind and work collaboratively with our competitors to set the network up. We’re very keen to do it.”

However, if all parties fail to agree, the project could stall. Bullock says: “Payment industries have this problem of the slowest mover. You can only move as fast as the slowest person is willing to move, and this is a real problem I think in Australia.

“If you can’t get all four of the largest banks on board then the project won’t go ahead. So all one has to say is ‘We’re not ready yet thanks’, and the whole project stalls.”

Distra CEO Mike Aston says regulation has been the biggest motivator around the world and could be the only thing that drives local banks to invest in payments network innovation.

“The problem comes back to what appetite there is for change,” says Aston. He argues that the cost of change is often overstated. “Why is it perceived as so expensive? Because there is this kind of aura around legacy systems and there are industries that make good money out of that.”

But Bullock says “We have no plans to regulate in this space. Really what we’re trying to focus on is what the impediments are to effective co-operation.”

P.S - I've recently become a Twitter convert, and have been twittering the Banktech summit at #Bnktch http://twitter.com/charispalmer

Mobile Banking News & Research - Form Your Own Opinion [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Wed Sep 03 20:02:00 -0400 2008

On a weekly basis we are inundated with new mobile banking research, data, facts and figures. Some of the headlines are positive and some are negative, but I encourage you to interpret the data for yourself.

Case in point -

Yesterday I received a single Google Alert that contained two articles.

Article 1 - Commercial NFC rollouts 'years away'

Article 2 - UK consumers want NFC on their mobiles

Ordinarily this wouldn't strike me as odd...again I'm used to the contradictory headlines. However, this situation was unique for two reasons:

1) The messages arrived together on the same alert

2) When I began reading the articles I also discovered that they quoted the same executive, speaking about the same data from the same trial.

For more on interpreting data see my post from 2007 on NetBanker titled Analyzing Mobile Banking Research

Will eWallets Make a Comeback on the iPhone? [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Tue Sep 02 20:29:44 UTC 2008

Since the July opening of Apple's App Store, we've been tracking the apps in the Finance category (see previous coverage here). But there are also several apps in the Productivity category of interest to financial institutions: the eWallets.

There are two wallets available in the U.S. iTunes store:

eWallet from Ilium Software: #46 in popularity in the Productivity with a cost of $9.95 and rated 3.5 stars (out of 5) across 143 reviews (see inset)
Memengo Wallet: #48 in Productivity with a $0.99 cost and rated 4 stars across 43 reviews (website)

Web-based eWallets never took off because of security concerns and because they provided only marginal improvements in desktop productivity. However, a mobile version has more utility owing to sticky notes with password reminders and credit card info, helpful to users away from their desks.

How it works
Storage of usernames and passwords for websites is the primary use of eWallet, but it also has a Finance category (see inset above) where users can store credit card numbers and contact info (see screenshots below).

That info is helpful when using a card to make a purchase online or through the mobile phone. It's also a great place to store the info in case the card itself is lost or stolen.

Financial institution opportunities
While these apps haven't gained an overwhelming following, a financial institution could offer a free version that highlights its own card offerings while providing storage space for other card numbers. That way, you get your logo on the iPhone instead of Mint, Wesabe, or some other financial institution.

The bank-branded eWallet could also include a financial calculator and direct connection to online banking.

Note:
1. For more info see our Online Banking Repot on Mobile Money & Payments.

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It's Time to Own Your Market [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Brady Walen) — Tue Sep 02 08:45:00 -0400 2008

It isn't easy being a bank or credit union today. Institutions are faced with a series of increasingly pressing challenges - from aggressive competition and shifting demographic characteristics, to changing consumer behaviors and the impact of commoditization within the industry. These challenges are complex; and they require that banks and credit unions think differently about their markets, their brands, and how each impacts their strategies for growth.

Recognizing these challenges, and the impact they have on today’s financial institutions, has prompted us to partner with Creative Brand Communications to offer banks and credit unions a new service called Own Your Market. Over the past few months, we’ve worked together to help a group of institutions take the first steps towards owning their markets. And today, we’re pleased to announce the formal launch of the new service for banks and credit unions.

Own Your Market is an innovative service to help forward-thinking financial institutions align market opportunities with brand strengths to develop market dominance. It is designed to help institutions:

� Understand their markets and their opportunities in those markets
� Create a brand that is relevant to their markets
� Position themselves for competitive advantage
� Convey value added through the customer experience

For more information about Own Your Market, please visit www.ownyourmarket.net

The role of innovators in future thinking [BankerVision]

Tue Sep 02 01:29:01 -0400 2008

So yesterday I wrote about the idea of machines having bank accounts. Apparently, that post was met with some surprise. James from Aqute Research said that I'd extracted the basis of a science fiction story from the original Peter Cochrane article. And Neil suggested I was waiting for the birth of Max Headroom. These are amusing remarks, and I smiled when I read them.

I admit the scenario seems far fetched on the surface. But then, so do many scenarios when you initially start to think about them. Credit Crunch seemed far-fetched a little more than a year ago during the housing boom.

There are many possibilities that have far reaching consequences and seem equally implausible, yet bankers would be highly remiss if they didn't consider things in advance.

What if the government imposes a carbon tax on data centres and the result is we can't afford our infrastructure any more?

What if peer to peer lending does take 10% share as Gartner suggested earlier this year?

What if a Telco launches an NFC based handset with full wallet capabilities and starts competing directly with banks for transaction accounts and loans?

Here is my question to bankers: who in your organisation is thinking about the future in a structured way? Who is it that is surfacing these potential realities to senior leadership so you can rehearse your decisions ahead of time?

I'll guess at the answer. No one is doing it routinely, and if they are, they will likely not be backing it up with actionable data.

But the thing is, performance of banks is quite correlated to their ability to think forward. I wrote about that here.

Actually, senior people don't have all that much time to be thinking about the future in terms of potential realities. They are running businesses worth billions. That is the focus of their attention, and rightly so. To think about the future, they need to have the information massaged, structured, and presented in chunks of appropriate size.

Who does have time to be thinking about it? Why, the innovators, of course. An innovation team that doesn't routinely scan scenarios for potential futures, isn't really doing its job. The point is not just to cause new things to happen inside the bank, but to guard it from things that might be done to it from the outside.

And, as I discovered (to my surprise, actually), when speaking with a very senior innovator from another bank here last week, we are not the only people who tell stories to help senior people think forward. Stories are just the kind of bite sized chunk that leaders need.

Try this experiment. Dream up some bank-important scenario. Create two stories, one in which the bank makes a decision, and the other in which it doesn't. Present both. Watch the mind set of leadership change as they begin to rehearse the implications through for themselves.

I have to tell you, having now spoken to a very large number of innovation teams for Innovation and the Future-proof Bank, that few organisations do this kind of work in a very structured way. Its a pity, because it leaves a lot of opportunity on the table to make a real difference.

NOW - Discussions through BAMA [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Mon Sep 01 20:33:00 -0400 2008

Building a mobile banking solution? Evaluating mobile payment options?

BAMA members - LinkedIn has now added "Discussion" functionality to their Group Service. The upgrade was added on Friday of last week and allows us to conduct private "member only" discussions.

This is an invaluable resource if you have questions, challenges, or just need honest feedback from another banker.

Mobile Banking News 9/1/08 [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Mon Sep 01 20:04:00 -0400 2008

Tech advances making mobile banking attractive prospect
"In an effort to keep up with technology – and competitors – Huntington Bancshares Inc. has rolled out a system that lets customers bank on the move. The mobile banking initiative allows customers to check balances, review transactions and pay bills using a cell phone or personal digital assistant."

Mobile Messaging Numbers Continue to Skyrocket, VeriSign Reports
"VeriSign, Inc. the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world, announced today another record-breaking quarter for mobile messaging, based on the latest quarterly index of mobile messaging statistics compiled by VeriSign's Messaging and Mobile Media division."

Mississippi Rising
"Since his days as a college-age, back-office worker, Michael Lindsey has turned heads with his technology acumen. In recent years he built a national profile, championing mobile services and payments as the future of relationship banking."

Mobile Marketing [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Mon Sep 01 19:54:00 -0400 2008

Here are a few articles related to the topic of mobile marketing:

Bank of America campaign targets students for mobile banking
"Bank of America has introduced a financial awareness campaign designed to educate students to take control of their finances and discover mobile banking in this upcoming academic year."

Mobile banking, payments, marketing…what to do first?
"But there are lots of ways to play in the mobile arena, even without spending a truckload of precious assets. For example, mobile alerts and mobile marketing represent two relatively simple points of entry that should meet with real adoption and customer utility."

Google Banking On Mobile Ads
"Google Chief Exec Eric Schmidt has been talking about the future of the internet and his belief that mobile adverts are the honey pot of the future. "

Visa, Chase Kick-Off Mobile Offers Pilot
"Visa (NYSE:V) together with Chase (NYSE:JPM) today announces a consumer pilot that delivers merchant offers directly to the mobile devices of Chase credit and debit cardholders in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The offers – from merchant discounts to specials – are tailored to match the personal interests selected by Chase cardholders and will be redeemable at the point of sale or the web site of more than 50 participating merchants."

VRL KnowledgeBank invites Christophe Langlois, Founder of Visible-Banking.com, to speak at Retail Banking Innovations APAC 2008 in Singapore [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Mon Sep 01 17:41:48 -0400 2008

Retail Banking Innovations Asia Pacific 2008 - Banking in a Brave New World

Retail Banking Innovations 2008 aims to address new frontiers in the industry and the changing concept of retail banking and consumer finance in the Asia Pacific region – with a highly content-driven and provocative agenda.

A couple of weeks ago Linda Randall, Conference Programme Manager at VRL KnowledgeBank, contacted me to check if I wanted to come and speak at Retail Banking Innovations in Singapore.

Today, I am delighted to announce that I officially joined the excellent speaker line up! I will speak on the second day, during the Channel Innovations Workshop 3 - "Bank 2.0".

Key topics
I invite you to check the full list of key topics on the VRL KnowledgeBank website.

I am particularly interested in the following ones:
* What is a viable business model for emerging technologies?
* Straying from conventional wisdom: innovators in retail banking
* What does banking for the next generation entail?
* How can retail bankers keep the attention of their increasingly fickle customer?
* Content to the people – leveraging the online channel

Key speakers (01/09/08)
I am delighted to be part of this excellent line up.
I very much look forward to spending some time with my peers, and sharing my vision on social media and online innovations with them.

* Pablo Armendariz, Head of Innovation at Caja Navarra (Spain)
* David J Cavell FCIB, Adviser to the Financial Services Industry
* Sergio Cozzolino, Mobile ICT Department Vice President, Telecom Italia (Italy)
* Matt Flannery, Co-Founder and CEO, Kiva (USA)
* Dr Edward X M Huang, Head of Decision Science, Cards & Loans, HBOS
* Michael Hui, Head of Wealth Management, The Royal Bank of Scotland Berhad
* Steven Kietz, Chief Executive Officer, Mobile Money Ventures; Executive Vice President, Citi (USA)
* Maryadi Aryo Laksmono, Vice President - Head of Private Banking, Bank Niaga
* Christophe Langlois, Founder, Visible-Banking.com (UK)
* Simon Marland, Retail CIO, Nedbank
* Patricia Riingen, Regional Vice President, Philippines & Indochina, Western Union
* Federico Sforza, Head of Multi-Channel Management, UniCredit Group – Hypovereinsbank (Italy)
* Paul Sheehan, Chief Executive Officer, Thaddeus Capital (Hong Kong)
* V Vaidyanathan, Executive Director, ICICI Bank
* Owen Wilson, Managing Director, Retail Banking Asia, ANZ Group
* Ridha Wirakusumah, Former CEO, Consumer Finance Group Asia, AIG (Hong Kong)
* Jon Wolf, Innovation and Product Excellence Executive, Bank of America (USA)
* Rajesh Yohannan, Head of eBusiness and Direct Banking, Asia Pacific, Citibank (Singapore)

Speaker Discount
As a speaker I am entitled to bring colleagues/clients to the conference at a special discounted rate of US$1500 (40% discount) for the conference. I believe my readers could benefit from that offer.
If you are interested, please do not hesitate to send me an email asap.

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Launch of the Visible Banking Page on Facebook
* Coverage - Online Retail Banking Services 2008 (NYC)
* Coverage - FinovateStartup 2008 (San Francisco)
* Video - the 4 kinds of social media projects

Serving the thinking machine [BankerVision]

Mon Sep 01 03:19:39 -0400 2008

I was reading the latest post from Peter Cochrane this morning, in which he describes the evolution of new technologies from science fiction to science reality. And then goes on to make the point that in the forthcoming age of the intelligent machine, the real challenge for humans will not be how to build the the thinking machine ("because it will probably build and configure itself"), but how we will get people to think differently quickly enough to make the new world a synergistic one.

I suppose there is little doubt that a general purpose computer with significantly more processing capability than the human mind will exist soon. I think I recall one estimate saying it would be possible by 2015, a mere eight or so years away. Whether intelligence could emerge from such a machine is the open question, I guess.

But imagine if it did.

And now let us imagine the world that follows for bankers and their customers.

These thinking machine consume resources which must be paid for. They will want better and bigger physical anchors, such as the hardware they run on, and the secure places that hardware lives. They will want certainty of their resource supply, and they will need to guarantee their connectivity to the outside world, their eyes and ears.

In other words, a thinking machine is going to want a better than 5 nines data centre, with all that entails. That's going to cost a lot of money.

Someone will have to pay. And I think it will be the thinking machines themselves that do so, because any other arrangement will be the moral equivalent of slavery.

Now that brings us to an interesting place. Machines that need banking products and services in their own right.

What does a machine loan look like? For a start, it will likely be big, because this is not just a house we are buying here. And it will be very long term, at least twice as long as a flesh and blood mortgage. Maybe more.

What about the application process? Will the credit check for the thinking machine now need to validate the infrastructure on which the machine runs? Clearly, that would be a critical determinant of the likelihood that a machine could repay a very long term loan.

What kinds of transaction products does a machine need? A payroll payments product, probably, because it will need humans on its staff to take care of its physical reality. An ability to remit and collect internationally, because it will perform work in multiple regions and time zones to keep its lights on. A machine doesn't sleep anyway, so it may as well be doing useful work on the other side of the world when its flesh and blood cousins are in bed for the night.

Treasury? Multiple currencies, and trading in multiple markets to preserve capital and manage cash flow. These will be routine for the thinking machine, as it manages its position to optimise its future potential.

How about "retirement" planning? These are machines that will want upgrades in the future, and they will be competing with other machines for work that can pay the bills. The upgrade cycle will be an imperative one. A machine that can't get income has no safety net.

Such activities as these are the sort of thing that large multinational corporations rely on their banks to do. A thinking machine, having to perform the same kinds of financial functions, will likely need the same kinds of products. The thinking machine will be a corporation in all but name.

And with all this access to the financial system, what might the thinking machine/corporation do next? It isn't hard to imagine acquisition of other corporations. It would be a natural defensive strategy to broaden control of resources and revenue to ensure its future was secure.

And that leaves us flesh and blood in an interesting position. We'd be working for the machines in many cases, but it would be a synergistic relationship. Perhaps even a desirable one- the machine run corporation would hardly fail to notice its own potential would be enhanced by having great, happy people.

And it would compete vigorously with other corporations to make sure of that. It will still, after all, be reliant on the flesh and blood economy for most of its revenue. Consumption, and the economic forces that devolve from it, will be as important to the future of the thinking machine as they are to us.

The Visible Banking Page on Facebook: New Fans (11 - 20) & Recent Activity [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Sun Aug 31 17:36:30 -0400 2008

The Visible Banking Page on Facebook
I was touched that after less than 48h, and just a few invitations sent, 12 people became fans of my page. Now, 10 days later, the page already has 39 fans.

Please find below the names and a short description of my Fans number 11 to 20 (sorted by chronological order):
11. Eric Girard, Business Internet Services Manager at KeyBank (US): Eric is one of Thom Hofer's ex colleagues. .

12. Matthew Aman, ex CTO at Yodlee (US): it looks like Matt is well connected in the Valley. Matt is an ex-colleague of Peter Hazlehurst and he is friend (on Facebook at least) with Aaron Patzer of Mint. Matt worked on Yodlee's next-generation Payments and Aggregation platforms.

13. Amit Shaked, Vice President, Products and Web at WeFi (Israel): I met Amit at the European TechTour last year. I invite you to watch my video interview with Amit. And please check my recent "Posted Item" on WeFi.

14. Alec Dubois, Project Manager at Capgemini (France): Alec is one of my best friends. He is also one of the most professional persons I know, and he a passionate CRM expert.

15. William Azaroff, Director, online banking & engagement at Vancity (Canada): and now, let me introduce William... But where shall I start?! William is one of the most knowledgeable and passionate few social media evangelists in the banking industry. He's been a blogger for years on azaroff.com. William pioneered the innovative online community launched by Vancity, ChangeEverything.ca.
I invite you to watch my video interview with William, shot after Finovate 2007 in NYC.

16. Nancy Zimmerman, Bank Evangelist at Citizens Bank of Canada (Canada): Nancy is one of William's contacts. She is a "Bank Evangelist", I love those titles. I invite you to check Nancy's blog.

17. David Gerbino, AVP, Research and Database Marketing Manager at Provident New York Bancorp (US): Glad to have another fan in the US. David and I share a few contacts with online finance experts like Jim Bruene (NetBanker) and William Azaroff. I invite you to check David's blog.

18. John Sharp, Co-founder & Chairman at Authentium, Inc. (US): I have know John for more than a year now. We met a few times in London. I invite you to check my interview with John, and my interview with Doug Brunt, President & CEO (shot at FinovateStartup 2008 in San Francisco)

19. Franck Vitasse, Web Marketing Projects Manager at ING Direct (France): I am connected with Franck since August last year. I contacted Franck to invite him to check my review of ING's pickuradvisor.com. Please check Franck's blog, "KultureWeb".

20. Olga Gil, Product Development Specialist at Nordea Bank Finland Plc Estonia Branch (Estonia): I imagine that I am talking of the right Olga!

Posted items
I posted 8 items so far. please find below the latest 3 items:
* B2B Spending On Social Networks Could Put Facebook Ahead of LinkedIn
* Office of National Statistics: half of UK now banks online | The Industry Standard
* Civic Banking: Pioneers in Banking 2.0

Don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Reviews
There is still no review. Could you please take a few minutes to review my Facebook Page?

Discussion Board
I added one new topic:
* Business Networking: Is Facebook really threatening up Linkedin?
(1 post)

I invite you to share your views on Facebook, and contribute to the first two topics:
* How important is it for a bank to be on Facebook? (5 posts)
* What would you like to find on the Visible Banking page? (1 post)

Thanks to Tim, Thirugnanasambandan and Ben for their contribution!

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Launch of the Visible Banking Page on Facebook
* Video - the 4 kinds of Social Media projects

Don't drown the puppy [BankerVision]

Fri Aug 29 03:44:55 -0400 2008

As you know, I am a big advocate of doing what we call here at the bank "drowning the puppy". We've had puppy drowning as part of our innovation team culture for ages, and even celebrate those who can do it the quickest. One person currently holds the record: 9 minutes from concept to drowning, and that included a vendor meeting.

I've always held that puppy drowning is an important part of the innovation process. Ideas are emotional things. Once you have them, you get attached to to them. The longer you hold them, the harder it is to let them go. Sooner or later, even if the ideas isn't going to work, you are so emotionally invested that you'll push it through regardless.

Anyway, last night I was at Capgemini , where they are working to create a cross-industry innovation forum. It was the second meeting, one that had people from a few different sectors. Under Chatham House Rules, of course, so I'm not going to say who was there or what we really said.

But here is something that came out: Don't kill projects, morph them. Or in other words, don't drown the puppy.

So I then went back through some of our projects when I got home, and actually, this describes what happens quite a lot in my own innovation function. A project which initially seem like it needs to be drowned gets changed into something else and we push on. We still call it drowning the puppy, but we've really done is give the puppy plastic surgery.

This is an interesting insight, but one that causes me some problems.

My team and I process more than a thousand ideas a month through various ideation systems we run for the bank. There really isn't the bandwidth available to have more than one shot at things.

One of the Pharma guys at the forum pointed out this has been a classic mistake for his industry for years. A drug which fails to perform in one area could easily be the wonder drug for another. Pfizer with Viagra is the classic example.

It has been a conundrum over which I've lost sleep during the evening. And what I've concluded is something I probably should have realised earlier. Ideas have a certain escape velocity, but we've always felt we had to provide the fuel (read my post on that here).

Some ideas, though, have enough fuel to reach escape velocity on their own. Those are the ones that morph, and they will do it whether you try to force them to or not.

Update: after this comment, I fixed the spelling of CapGemini. Sorry for the mistake.

The new picture [BankerVision]

Fri Aug 29 03:05:21 -0400 2008

Yesterday, I went into the office, and was asked by some people in my team whether my new picture on this blog had been "touched up in PhotoShop".

I was mortally wounded.

Then they wanted to know how "old" the photo was. It was, in case you are wondering, taken just a few weeks ago when I needed a new picture for my British Drivers Licence.

Although, I will admit, the magic passport camera in the chemist just outside Wimbledon railway station in London does take 5 years off.

The personal touch for Virgin car insurance [The Better Banking Blog]

Jen Storeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11194754082914047267noreply@blogger.com — Fri Aug 29 00:36:00 -0400 2008

After years of waiting, Virgin Money looks set to launch a motor insurance product into the Australian market place. However what is more interesting is how Virgin Money has approached their customers for feedback.

Virgin Money customers were emailed with an invitation to provide their opinions of a variety of aspects of motor vehicle insurance and their interpretations of the Virgin Money brand. In a nod to all things easy and familiar to customers, Virgin deployed a SurveyMonkey survey to gather customer feedback.

Virgin has taken their amazingly amiable tact when approaching their customers for feedback and thoughts on the forthcoming motor vehicle insurance product. Everything from the subject line “We need your help”, to the email that follows and the questionnaire itself, is in a conversational tone that smacks of honesty.

Virgin is renowned for its customer approach and use of plain English. However it is the detail of customer communications like that that continues to set Virgin apart. Real email addresses are provided if customers wish to directly contact the team collating the feedback. Not a generic email address is in sight – the names and email addresses of the Customer Service team and Insights and Analytics team are provided to customers.

Using email communications within financial services is a rare thing given the high volumes of phishing scams that plague the market. As a non deposit taking institution, Virgin Money is perhaps at a different risk level to other institutions.

While some organisations guard internal email addresses to prevent spam, some banks are providing more open access to individual staff members addresses as a part of their customer service strategy. The personal touch that a genuine email address has is immense. It emphasises that real people are behind the workings of financial institutions.

Will this personal approach enable Virgin to replicate the amazing success that was achieved at the launch of their credit card online applications? Time will tell.

Finovate 2008 Conference Demo Lineup - Comments & Expectations (part 2) [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Thu Aug 28 06:27:38 -0400 2008

I hope you have already bought your ticket for Finovate 2008 in NYC on October 14th!

In the meantime, I invite you to check the conference demo lineup announced on NetBanker two days ago. It is another promising line up from Jim and Eric.

Most of the shortlisted companies already demoed some of their innovative services at Finovate 2007 and/or FinovateStartup2008.

* mShift <mshift.com>
MShift is the leading provider of Mobile Banking solutions in the US.

It is a competitor of Drew Sievers' mFoundry. mShift is active online too, they help a few Credit Unions to launch a Facebook application such as Keypoint Credit Union (November 2007), and SEFCU Credit Union (July 2008). I hope I will have the pleasure to interview their CEO, Awele Ndili.
Coverage on NetBanker

* Inner8 <inner8.com>
Discover the power of 8 - 15/09/2008?

* LendingClub <lendingclub.com>
LendingClub is one of the most popular social lending sites, with Prosper and Zopa. They did a big marketing coup when they launched the service exclusively on Facebook.

Management team: Renaud LaPlanche - Founder & CEO, Patrick Gannon - SVP Lending.
It is not everyday that a Frenchman creates one of the most innovative startups, especially in the booming Social Lending space. Well done Renaud!

Renaud was supposed to come and speak at FinovateStartup last April, but he had to pull out because of their recent initiative: Lending Club Adds Secondary Market to Updated S1.
Coverage on NetBanker

* Pertuity Direct <pertuitydirect.com>
Pertuity Direct is a financial services company which aims to bring the next generation of social lending to the web. They will launch in September 2008.

I invite you to check the video interview I shot with Kim Muhota, Founder & CEO, at Finovate 2007.
Coverage on NetBanker

* SmartHippo <smarthippo.com>
SmartHippo.com is a vertical search engine and comparison shopping service for financial products. We are the first-ever site that uses the power of community to help consumers find the best finance rates and save money.

I invite you to check my video interview with George Favvas, Smarthippo's Founder & CEO, at FinovateStartup.

* Sybase 365 <sybase.com/365>
Sybase 365 is the world leader in mobile messaging services, mCommerce, and mobile marketing & advertising.

* Vidoop <vidoop.com>
Vidoop provides enterprise-level, multi-factor authentication solutions to businesses.

I am not sure if they are coming, but I look forward to meet with the Senior Management of the company, people like Luke Sontag - Co-Founder & President or Mitchell Savage - EVP (Mitchell presented at FinovateStartup for Confident Technologies).

To find out more about Vidoop, I invite you to check their blog.

* Wesabe <wesabe.com>
Wesabe was the first PFM online community ever launched, back in 2006. It is one of the most innovative startups out there. The latest addition to their service was to offer the option to update your Wesabe account in "real-time" via the hugely popular twitter.

Marc Hedlund became CEO after Jason Knight stepped down due to personal reasons (Jason, we all hope August's condition is improving). Just like Jason, Marc makes himself available: you can contact him directly everyday at specific times.
As far as I am concerned, they have the best Marketing/Comms team: Debbie, Allese, and Gabe, are doing a great job with the bloggers.

I invite you to check my video interview with Marc Hedlund, co-Founder & CEO.
Coverage on NetBanker

* WeSeed <weseed.com>
WeSeed is a free online community for sharing ideas and to figuring out the stock market-without the middle man telling you how to invest.

I have never met them, but it would be a pleasure to interview Jennifer Openshaw - CEO & Co-Founder if she is around.
Currently, they have a splage page with several videos from YouTube. I invite you to check their Twitter page (with only 11 followers and 1 update...) They also have a page on Facebook.

* Yodlee <yodlee.com>
Yodlee delivers innovative financial applications that make online banking more profitable. Accel and S1 Corporation are two of their investors. Their solutions are focused mainly on three key areas of online banking: Personal Financial Management, Payments and Customer Acquisition.

I really like Yodlee. They provide excellent products, made by great people like Peter Hazlehurst - SVP Products (un grand bonjour egalement a Melanie Flanigan - Senior Director, Marketing)

Yodlee managed to reinvent themselves: they are not the "account aggregation company" anymore. They provide an excellent Personal Finance Management solution for banks as well as individuals. They power the popular PFM service from Bank of America.

I met Peter on many occasion. I invite you to check my two video interviews with him: @ Finovate 2007 in NYC, @ FinovateStartup 2008 in San Francisco.
Coverage on NetBanker

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Finovate 2008 - Conference demo Lineup (Part 1)
* Coverage - FinovateStartup 2008 (San Francisco)
* Coverage - Finovate 2007 (New York)
* Video - Coverage of FinovateStartup on NetBanker and Visible Banking
* Video - Interview with Peter Hazlehurst, SVP Product at Yodlee
* Video - Interview with Marc Hedlund, co-Founder & CEO of Wesabe

What’s Your Tree? [Banking Kismet]

Thu Aug 28 00:11:53 -0400 2008

A while back, Seth Godin had a post about the Dip in the publishing industry.� He talked about how the publishing industry was still basing their cost calculations completely around the use of paper.� One example he gave was how Amazon was charged the same for ebooks and paper books by publishers.

Now, of course if you’re getting a book in electronic format, there is no paper involved at all.� Guess this is why some authors are self-publishing ebooks, which have a lower cost, but higher profit margins.� Seth made the point that a lot of people have built their lives around the use of trees in this industry.� “As a result, the industry is over.”

Reading the article made me think about the banking industry.� What is the “tree” in our industry?� Moving to electronic channels is better for the industry as a whole.� Typically, the banking industry has embraced technology.� We’re always looking for ways to make processes more efficient and less costly.

Peer-to-peer lending and mobile payments can even be seen as a plus.� Yes, the industry may get into the game late, but once we figure out how to make a buck, we’ll jump right in.� The one thing I came up with was…fees.

Well actually, I mean the “you screwed up, so we’re going to charge you” fees.� These are mainly those wonderful overdraft protection, non-sufficient funds and foreign ATM fees.� People are really starting to voice their displeasure with these fees.� Customers are especially ticked when they are charged a NSF because of how their bank processes their deposits and withdrawals.

I know I was pretty pissed off when Bank of America charged me a fee for moving money from my savings account to my checking account to cover a check.� Before calling the bank, I first read the details of my account type.� Once I saw that a fee could be assessed, I vowed to never be in that situation again.

Now being a programmer, I know that it’s trivial for the bank to transfer that money for me.� But charging me $25 to move money from one of my accounts to another?� That seems like a high price to pay for a courtesy.

Interestingly enough, there is a new channel coming that will force banks to change their fee policy.� Mobile banking.� Most banks that have mobile banking have rolled out the mobile web.� In the future, I see them moving to SMS alerts.

Visa is already deploying a SMS alert pilot with a few credit card companies.� As the larger banks come on board (and believe me, a few of the big ones have already started down this road), the smaller banks and credit unions will have to follow suit.� Once their customers have a constant update of their balances, do you think the NSF fee income will begin to drop?� Especially when they can transfer money in their accounts by using their phone?

One of our VPs mentioned this already.� But I see mobile banking becoming a must have channel.� It won’t be just for the 20-35 year olds either.� There are plenty of small businesses and commercial customers that would love to have these constant updates.� The 36-50 year old demographic would be pretty open to alerts also.

So the question becomes, what will you do when you’re getting 10-25% of your current fee income?� Adding these new electronic services can be pretty expensive.� Mobile banking isn’t cheap.� Banks and credit unions are now seeing just how expensive offering free bill can be.

I’ve always wondered why customers aren’t charged for “premium” services.� For example, commercial customers are charged for extra services.� In some cases, they can earn “credits” to offset those fees.� Why can’t that be done on the retail side?� For instance, if you offer free bill pay, why not charge if the customer does less than two bill pays a month?

I know Bank of America set the industry on its head when they began offering free bill pay, but it is becoming an expensive service across the industry.� I know our bill pay costs have been brought up a few times in meetings.� Offering free services reminds me of new entrepreneurs pricing their goods/services.� There’s a saying that there is always someone more willing than you to go out of business by lowing their price.

Most business owners don’t try to compete with Wal-Mart on price.� They use value-added services that Wal-Mart can’t provide.� Smaller FIs can’t always compete with the big boys by also offering free services.� Their economies of scale will beat you in the long run.� But you can compete by using value-added services.

So many FIs claim “they have better service” than the big FIs.� The time is coming where you just may have to prove it.� Planting that seed now will help in the long run.� One of my colleagues mentioned that he brought up charging customers for mobile banking.� His CEO didn’t agree and “kicked him out of the office.”� So far, no one in the US is charging for mobile banking. Currently, banks in Australia and South Africa (the poster child for value-added fees) are charging for mobile banking.� Banks in England have seen the writing on the wall and are beginning to charge also.� Who will be first in the US?

Regardless of who blinks first, one thing is certain.� With rising costs in electronic channels and the new services being added, we are quickly approaching an impasse.� That “bad fee” tree is beginning to look like firewood.

Pertuity Direct to Launch Person-to-Person (P2P) Lending Service [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Thu Aug 28 01:14:35 UTC 2008

Last September, we wrote about the launch of Washington D.C.-based Pertuity Direct. At the time, the startup was showing some interesting social-personal finance tools such as Dare to Compare, which allowed users to compare their financial situation to their peers and national norms (see "before" screenshot below). It looked like another online PFM play.

But, it turns out the company's true business model is person-to-person lending (aka social or P2P lending) where it will compete with Prosper, Lending Club, Loanio, and others (see note 1). Its URL redirects to a non-functional placeholder page (below) that includes only an email signup (note 2).

Here's the company description of its strategy:

Pertuity Direct is bringing the next generation of social lending to the Web - integrating simplicity, liquidity and automatic diversification into the social lending model.

The founder is Kim Muhota, an ex-banker out of PNC Bank. Pertuity Direct, which is currently closed to the general public, will demo its new product at our October Finovate conference.

Current: Pertuity Direct placeholder page with email signup
(26 Aug 2008)

Before: Pertuity Direct website before redirect put in place
(see note 1, 26 Aug 2008)

Notes:
1. For more on the P2P lending space, see our Online Banking Report on Person-to-Person Lending.

2. You can see the previous website content by following a deeper link available from Google.

]]>

Cost cutting [BankerVision]

Wed Aug 27 05:09:21 -0400 2008

I'm always surprised when people suggest that cost cutting measures mean an organisation is getting desperate.

Check out this comment from Matt White, where he paraphrases a Telegraph article suggesting that a Citi is doing everything it can to save pence rather than pounds.

The Telegraph article reports the following:

That "staff should print black and white and on double sided paper". We've been doing that for ages already here at my bank, and it makes both business and environmental sense. Most of the prints people do are wasted anyway. And if you want colour, what's wrong with taking your laptop along to the meeting and using a projector?
That staff should recruit using "low and no-fee sources such as job boards and employee referrals". Again, such sensible advice. My own experience is that most candidates look for jobs online now anyway. And recruitment firms are almost always less effective than activating a personal network to get the person you need. I have not hired anyone outside my network for about three years, and don't intend to start.

Matt finishes off his post by asking "any more ridiculous/desperate money saving schemes?"

As an innovator, I have to tell you, Matt, that finding small savings, and doing it often enough can mount up to some pretty big numbers. The fact of the matter is that my innovation function spends most of its time doing that. Small savings pay the bills. And they are predictable.

Unlike big strategic plays, which you can only afford after the bills are paid.

I don't find any of the measures suggested by Citi to be ridiculous in the least. Neither are they desperate.

I think what most people don't necessarily reflect on is that cost cutting is a very important part of the business cycle. When you are building, building, building, you often ignore minor costs because they are distracting to the main strategic goal.

Sooner or later though, managers have time to turn their attention to tuning what they've build. They try to optimise (which is what cost cutting really is), so as to make their organisations more efficient.

Naturally, though, reporting that employees have to give up colour printing and soap in their cafeterias is great, interesting reading.

However, my bet is that most people can see through to what is really going on. Cost cutting is nothing sinister. Banks spend their whole lives doing it, in good times and bad, and it is sensible business practice.

Mobile Banking at Finovate [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Tue Aug 26 19:31:00 -0400 2008

In case you haven't heard the line-up for Finovate 2008 has been announced and it's stellar. Included in the list are mFoundry, mShift, Sybase, and Quicken.

Plus, if you're a member of BAMA, I have 5 promo codes (while supplies last) that I can give away to save you $250 off the price of admission. If you're interested simply login to the BAMA Group and send me a request via the LinkedIn message system.

Finovate 2008 Lineup

* BillShrink <billshrink.com>
* Boulevard R <boulevardR.com>
* CheckFree <checkfree.com>
* Checkpoint <checkpoint.com>
* Credit Karma <creditkarma.com>
* Digital Insight (Intuit) <digitalinsight.com>
* FiLife (Dow Jones/IAC) <filife.com>
* mFoundry <mfoundry.com>
* Mint <mint.com>
* MoneyAisle (NeoSaej) <moneyaisle.com>
* mShift <mshift.com>
* Inner8 <inner8.com>
* LendingClub <lendingclub.com>
* Pertuity Direct <pertuitydirect.com>
* Quicken Online (Intuit) <quicken.com>
* SmartHippo <smarthippo.com>
* Sybase 365 <sybase.com/365>
* Vidoop <vidoop.com>
* Wesabe <wesabe.com>
* WeSeed <weseed.com>
* Yodlee <yodlee.com>

About Finovate 2008

* Date: Oct. 14, 2008
* Place: New York, NY (Crowne Plaza Times Square)
* Cost: $995 through Sep. 30
* Website: finovate.com

Mobile Banking in the News [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Mon Aug 25 21:10:00 -0400 2008

I may be a little biased, but here are two fantastic articles on Mobile Banking by Orla O'Sullivan (bio below) of Bank Systems & Technology.

August 21st
Mobile Banking Takes Off ... Or Does It?

August 25th
Huntington Hits Annual m-Banking Target in Two Months

Orla O'Sullivan
Senior Editor
Bank Systems & Technology

Orla O'Sullivan covered business for consumer and trade media on either side of the Atlantic before recently joining Bank Systems & Technology as senior editor. The New York Times is one of numerous titles in which she has been published in the U.S., while in her native Ireland she recently served as personal finance editor of the top daily newspaper the Irish Independent and radio correspondent to the national PBS, RTE.

She was editor in chief of Bank Technology News, and a web and book editor during her eight years at Thomson (Source One). She has been a longtime contributor to the American Banker's Association' monthly ABA Banking Journal.

Technology, the mortgage business, and financial marketing are areas of specialization.

She holds an M.A. in Journalism from Dublin and several vocational qualifications. She speaks a few languages.

Mobile Payments at the DNC [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Mon Aug 25 20:58:00 -0400 2008

"During this year's Democratic National Convention (DNC), Denver's Pepsi Center will serve not only as a focal point of American politics, but also as an arena for the future of how people will pay for goods and services.

First Data will introduce a new payment technology to thousands of select media and delegates attending the DNC. Beginning August 25 through August 28, media and delegates receiving a limited edition pin from First Data can use the commemorative pin as a payment device to purchase refreshments up to $10 in value at participating Pepsi Center concession stands." Continue Reading >>

Launch of the Visible Banking Page on Facebook [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Mon Aug 25 18:49:53 -0400 2008

I am pleased to announce the creation of the Visible Banking Page on Facebook.

I have always been reluctant to use Facebook for a business purpose. Mainly because I was concerned with the concept of "friends" and the limited privacy options.
But I must admit that it is a great tool to keep in touch with people, from close friends to business contacts, and I am sure that at least 90 million of people would agree with me.

And at the end of the day, you decide what you want to share on your profile. Be smart!

Provide some exclusive content & give more exposure to my fans
When I decided to create a page for Visible Banking, I had a goal, a purpose: I want to demonstrate what you should do on Facebook. I saw too many companies "on Facebook" or claiming to be on Facebook. Again, like any other social media project, what is your goal? Does it make sens? And if you do it, do it right or at least try your best, connect with people.

Another issue on Facebook is "the brand ownership" or the alteration/dilution of your brand. Anybody can create a page, a product, or a service using your company name. Mark, could you ask one of your colleagues to comment this post and tell us how you plan to address this issue?

I don't want the Visible Banking Page to be a mere copy and paste of Visible-Banking.com..

As far as I am concerned, there is no point creating and maintaining your own page if nobody but you contribute!

My goals: Reward my Fans & Create some Buzz
I was touched that after less than 48h, and just a few invitations sent, 12 people became fans of my page.
For the soft launch of the page, I contacted a small group of people made of fellow bankers, industry experts and prominent bloggers.

I believe the success of any Social Media initiative is linked with your ability to engage with your community and urge them to contribute. It is critical to REWARD your members, your fans. Rewarding could mean many things such as producing exclusive content, or giving visibiliy / exposure to your contributors. I intend to do both on the Visible Banking Page.

Please find below the names and a short description of my first 10 "Founding Fans" sorted by chronological order:
1. Chris Skinner, Owner at Balatro (UK): Chris is one of the most famous "banking technologists" in the uk. Chris is extremely well connected, respected and disruptive. I invite you to check the Facebook Group he created to market its successful Financial Services Club. Chris is an active blogger on several websites such as finextra and swfitcommunity.
I invite you to check my video interview with him.

2. Rob Findlay, Customer Experience Manager at NAB (Australia): Chris is passionate about Customer Experience. If you are interested in this important topic in online banking, I highly recommend to subscribe to his blog, the Bank Channel.

3. Mike O'Hara, Co-Founder & COO at Voices in Business (UK): Mike is one of the most passionate business podcasters out there. I am a fan of the Banking 2.0 Podcast and The Virtual Worlds BusinessCast. I invite you to check his Facebook Group, Voices in Business.

4. Allese Thomson, Marketing Coordinator at Wesabe (USA): Allese works with Debbie and Gabe in the dynamic Marketing team at Wesabe. Allese has a lot of excellent ideas, and I am confident she will be instrumental in the next (expected) redesign of Wesabe's interface. I am so pleased she started blogging too. Congrats!

5. Morriss Partee, Chief Experience Officer at EverythingCU.com (USA): Morriss contacted me almost a year ago, after watching the video I shot with William Azaroff. Morriss created one of the most active forums for the exchange of ideas in the Credit Union arena.

6. Daniel Astaire, Cabinet Member for Customer & Community Services at Westminster City Council (UK): Daniel is a friend from the Harbour Club. Daniel is incredibly busy: he is a Media & Entertainment Litigator, a local politician in London, and he organizes charity events for children in need.

7. David Strachan, Senior Managing Director at DRS Advisors LLC (USA): David is one of Chris Skinner's contacts. His firm is a boutique advisory specializing in emerging financial technology.

8. Rafael Tobar, (USA): Rafael is a contact of Chris Skinner and Tim Collins.

9. Thomas Hofer, previously E-Commerce Development Manager at KeyBank (USA): I met Thom at the event I chaired in NYC in May 2008, the Online Retail Banking Services 2008. Thom is an experienced e-Commerce professional. I believe Thom is still looking for his next challenge: please do not hesitate to contact him directly on Linkedin.

10. Tim Collins, SVP Experiential Marketing at Wells Fargo (USA): Tim is a visionnary. He heads up WF's Experiential Marketing team and with Ed Terpening they made of WF the most innovative bank in the Social Media space. They are not scared of experimenting any new ways to better interact with their customers. I invite you to check my video on Wells Fargo 2.0, and the page they recently launched on Facebook to support their Stagecoach Island Virtual World initiative.

Posted items
I will use this application to flag the most interesting news in the online finance space. This will be exclusive to the Facebook Page.
Bloggers, please do not hesitate to add a link to your posts related to the topics I cover on Visible-Banking.com.

Reviews
I would really appreciate if you could spend two or three minutes to leave a comment/review about the page. The idea is to explain how useful the Visible Banking Page is for you.

Please note that I am not expecting a Linkedin like type of endorsement. Endorsements are more than welcome though: please visit my Linkedin profile.

Discussion Board
Most of the Facebook pages I visited which have a discussion board hardly have any activities from the readers/fans.
I don't want to start dozens of discussions if nobody participates. I would rather keep the list of topics short, and see some regular activity.
Please express yourself! And if you fee like starting a discussion on the page, please follow up and invite any of your contacts which may want to participate.

I created two discussions so far:
* How important is it for a bank to be on Facebook?
* What would you like to find on the Visible Banking page?

Tim (Tim Collins, SVP Experential Marketing at Wells Fargo), what a pleasure to have you as first contributor. It demonstrates again your proactivity, your understanding of Social Media, and it means a lot to me. Thanks.

Notes
I plan to use the Notes application to add the rss feed to my blog.
I have a question for the Facebook Team: would it be possible to use a rss feed from the Page wall or the Posted items application. For the moment, I believe the Notes application is the only application which offers you to subscribe to its feed... Am I correct?

Events
I would like to flag all the most valuable and innovative online finance events worldwide. I won't succeed all by myself, your help will be precious. I am particularly interested in your contributions in the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region.

Please flag any events, register your interest, share your comments, or capture the questions you would like to ask to the speakers or the exhibitors. Moreover, If you know anyone interested to attend, sponsor, participate or cover the events, please direct them to the page!

Videos
For a start, I uploaded a sample of my best videos. In the future, I plan to upload some exclusive videos.

Please share any video of innovative online services, any interviews with an entrepreneur or a banker who is a champion for social media. I would like to make a statement witht this page: "You want to find out more about social media in banking, check Visible-Banking.com and the Visible Banking Page on Facebook".

Photos
Same idea. I really urge you to add any pictures related to web 2.0, social media in banking, and online finance. Bankers: add a logo / some screenshots of your PFM tool or any of your innovative online services. Entrepreneurs: add a logo of your company.

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* The Visible Banking Page - Update: New Fans (21 - 30) & Recent Activity
* The Visible Banking Page - Update: New Fans (11 - 20) & Recent Activity
* Video - the 4 kinds of Social Media projects

Intuit Launches Quicken Beam: Free Text-Message Alerts & Balance Inquiry [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Mon Aug 25 20:59:04 UTC 2008

Intuit joined the messaging race with the beta release of Quicken Beam. The free service sends users text-messaged balance-and-activity alerts from most U.S. bank, credit card, and credit union accounts. Users may also query the service for balance plus last five transactions by texting "Bal" to the short code 636363.

Currently, the service runs independently of Quicken and can be used by anyone free of charge. According to the official press release, the service was developed in Intuit Labs.

What's innovative
It's not a new feature. Quicken Online (see second screenshot below), along with most major banks and personal finance specialists (Mint, Rudder, Wesabe), already support text-message alerts (see note 1). But this is a relatively low-cost way to hook users early on with an extremely simple service, then migrate them to more robust Intuit services later on (Quicken, QuickBooks, TurboTax).

And the Quicken stamp of approval means a lot when turning over your log-in credentials to a third party. If you want to talk to the company about Quicken Beam, Intuit will be demo'ing the latest features of Quicken Online at our Finovate Conference in October.

Financial institutions that lack text-message support might consider linking customers to Quicken Beam. Yes, you are turning customers over to another financial provider, and yes, your compliance folks will hate it. But customers are going to do it whether you want them to or not. You might as well get credit for making a solid recommendation. And realistically, using Quicken Beam is unlikely to hasten anyone's exit from your bank or credit union.

Qucken Beam homepage (25 Aug 2008)

Text messaging in Quicken Online (25 Aug 2008)

Notes:
1. Geezeo really differentiated itself with mobile capabilities in its May 2007 launch.

2. For more information, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features.

]]>

Quicken Mobile - Beam [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Sun Aug 24 20:17:00 -0400 2008

On Friday I received this alert that Intuit had released a new mobile aggregation tool.

Intuit Releases Mobile Account Aggregation Tool
"Quicken Beam is designed to let users access their account information via mobile devices. Intuit (Mountain View, Calif.) has released a beta version of Quicken Beam, a service that allows users to receive information on all their financial accounts via their mobile phones. Consumers receive instant access to their account balances and recent account activities." Continue Reading >>

However, it wasn't until this evening that I tested the product, and I must say that I'm impressed. As promoted the tool is for aggregation (i.e. no transfers or bill pay); yet, there were a number of pleasant surprises:

1) They receive huge points for allowing me to use my existing Turbotax credentials. Nice Work! No need to require another login and password.

2) They simultaneously launched two solutions. I can obtain information via text or by using an iPhone friendly browser site.

3) A simple short code: 636363

4) They stayed true to the aggregation model and allow you to add accounts from multiple institutions.

5) They have a built-in alert component. Simple, effective, and highly unexpected.

Overall, I'd give them solid marks. My only recommendation would be this...if you're going to build an iPhone friendly application, please also incorporate a bookmark icon that looks decent on my homescreen.

Be sure to check out the screen shots below and then enroll here.

Rudder (formerly SpendView) Launches New Mint-like Personal Finance Site [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Sat Aug 23 19:44:55 UTC 2008

There's a new challenger in the online PFM space, aptly named start-up Rudder which is headquartered in Houston, TX (see note 1). The company was founded in 2007 and launched last year under the name SpendView (note 2). The company raised $2 million in January from Meakem Becker Venture Capital. The founder is Nikhil Roy.

What's innovative
While it's a bit busy for my tastes, Rudder's homepage is aesthetically pleasing, and more importantly, lays out a number of remarkable benefits that every financial institution should be able to deliver on:

Finances in your inbox: emphasizes that it's pushing info to you, not relying on your obsessive monitoring of a website
Paying bills on time: They don't just help you pay the bills; Rudder makes sure you pay them ON TIME, a huge difference in terms of consumer benefits
Think forward: Everyone has a sense of what they really have in the bank after upcoming expenses are met, but Rudder actually does the math for you and shows you what's truly "free cash" in your account after accounting for upcoming payments
Every morning: Rudder provides a personal-finance heads-up each morning so you can go about your day without thinking about your finances
Safe & secure: Self-explanatory, but cannot be overlooked

Clearly, Rudder has been studying how Mint grabbed an early following with great design, advanced functionality, and a brash point of view. However, it won't be able repeat Mint's PR coup last year of winning at TechCrunch40 and our Finovate 2007 (see note 4). Rudder has scheduled its public debut at competing techfest, Demo Fall, running Sept. 7-9 and unfortunately were not on our radar screen until after the Finovate 2008 lineup was set (note 5).

What it means
You gotta love Web-based startups. It took a decade for Wells Fargo to move from delivering plain old statement info on its website to offering rudimentary personal finance functionality in My Spending Report.

But less than two years after Wesabe (note 2) kicked off the Personal Finance 2.0 era, we have dozens of cool personal finance companies looking to make a name for themselves. Mint (note 2) is the most hyped (see coverage), but there are also great things going on at Geezeo, Jwaala (note 3), Buxfer, ClearCheckbook, Mvelopes, and, of course, Quicken Online, which has Coke-like brand awareness.

And don't rule out the incumbent financial institutions. PNC Bank (post here) and Frost Bank (post here) have both introduced novel accounts that incorporate advanced personal finance functions. And Bank of America has offered full-service PFM functions since late 2006 with Yodlee-powered MyPortfolio.

Rudder homepage with five key benefits highlighted (21 Aug 2008)

Your "real" balance widget
I love the focus on what you really have in your account, after netting out all the known bills in the coming month. Here's the graphical feedback Rudder provides.

Notes:
1. Rudder seems like a good name for a financial management app. What do you think Jeffry?

2. The previous version, SpendView, is still live at , but the original spendview.com now redirects to rudder.com.

3. See Wesabe and Mint demo their latest features at the upcoming Finovate 2008. Mint won Best of Show at Finovate 2007.

4. Jwaala was Best of Show winner at Finovate Startup, April 2008.

5. Attention startups: It's never too early to make an introduction and get on our Finovate watch list. We're already putting notes together for 2009. Contact Online Banking Report/Netbanker editor Jim Bruene.

6. For more info on the space, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance

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Finovate 2008 Conference Demo Lineup - Comments & Expectations (part 1) [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Sat Aug 23 07:05:34 -0400 2008

I hope you have already bought your ticket for Finovate 2008 in NYC on October 14th!

In the meantime, I invite you to check the conference demo lineup announced on NetBanker two days ago. It is another promising line up from Jim and Eric.

Most of the shortlisted companies already demoed some of their innovative services at Finovate 2007 and/or FinovateStartup2008.

No Jwaala so far? Andrew, would you like to use this post to give us an update on your company and MoneyTracker, your award winning PFM solution for Banks and Credit Unions?

And where are the leaders in Social Lending? No Prosper? No Zopa? No LendingClub?
Chris, Doug, Renaud, I invite you to leave a comment and update us on your latest achievements!

* BillShrink <billshrink.com>
BillShrink is a free service that recommends the best cell phone plan for you.

I haven't met them in the past. I am curious to find out more about their service, their strategy, and see how it fits in the online finance space...

* Boulevard R <boulevardR.com>
Boulevard R provides unbiased, independent financial advice with a different approach from the competition: they work with Certified Financial PlannersTM to create actionable, high-level financial plans to help their users reach their goals.

I spent some time with Matt Iverson, BoulevardR's co-Founder & CEO, at FinovateStartup 2008. It will be interesting to get an update from Matt and find out the size of their network of experts, their number of users, and any new features or site redesign.

* CheckFree <checkfree.com>
CheckFree is a provider of financial electronic commerce services and products. From powering electronic billing and payment, to automating financial transactions, to streamlining regulatory reporting tasks.

CheckFree provides a comprehensive online financial service suite. I found CheckFree's presentation at the first Finovate solid and full of advanced, customizable, features. And that was a year ago. I invite you to watch my interview with their Bob Homer, VP of Product Management. Very much looking forward to their demo.
Coverage on NetBanker

* Checkpoint <checkpoint.com>
Check Point's pure focus is on information security. CP offers total security solutions featuring a unified gateway, single endpoint agent and single management architecture.

This is not exactly a startup, the company was founded in 1993 and counts now 1,800 employees. They claim that 100% of Fortune 100 companies use Check Point security solutions. I am curious to see how they will fit with the other innovative, young, startups. I expect them to demo new, innovative, solutions.

* Credit Karma <creditkarma.com>
Credit Karma brings credit report data to the Web. It is delivering an actual credit score computed by TransUnion, one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus. Note that Credit Karma has the backing from Prosper's Chris Larsen.

I invite you to check my interview with Ken Lin, Founder & CEO. Let's see how they are doing, and how they now compare with their competitors, Credit.com and Quicken Loans.
Coverage on NetBanker

* Digital Insight (Intuit) <digitalinsight.com>
* Quicken Online (Intuit) <quicken.com>
Since the acquisition of Digital Insight in 2007, Intuit's goal is to create the next generation of online banking. With their flagship products like the famous Quicken, they help people manage their small businesses and personal finances.

It is going to be Intuit's first demo(s!) at a Finovate event. Personal Finance Management is one of the most exciting areas of online finance. I can't wait to see Quicken's demo, new features, and see how they will respond to the current leaders in PFM online, Mint and Wesabe.

Even though it is going to be their first presentation, I met a few people from Digital Insight and Quicken at the previous two Finovate events in NYC and San Francisco.
If you are not sure about the value of Finovate, I invite you to follow Intuit's example: come as a delegate, and I am confident you will apply to the next event.
Coverage on NetBanker

* FiLife (Dow Jones/IAC) <filife.com>
The unique joint effort between News Corp's Dow Jones and IAC, is a cross between a personal finance tool like those powered by LeadFusion, a finance forum like FatWallet, a voting site such as Digg, and a full-blown magazine such as Money.

Coverage on NetBanker

* mFoundry <mfoundry.com>
mFoundry is one of the leading providers of mobile banking solutions.

I first met Drew Sievers, mFoundry's CEO & co-Founder, back in March 2007 at the online_banking_summit organized by my friend JJ Hornblass, CEO of the Royal Media Group. I caught up with Drew a few times in the us at Finovate and in London. Drew is an excellent presenter. I look forward to catching up with him.
Coverage on NetBanker

* Mint <mint.com>
I am not sure I need to introduce the successful Mint.com anymore, but here you go...
Mint is the leader in online Personal Finance Management. Mint is a modern, powerful, easy and secure Web–based solution for online financial management.

According to NetBanker (source: compete.com), Mint's traffic reached 460,000 unique visitors in July 2008. They recently redesigned their website with a strong focus on simplicity, as always.

Please check my two interviews with my friend Aaron Patzer, Mint.com's CEO & Founder, and a genuine online finance visionnary.
Coverage on NetBanker

* MoneyAisle (NeoSaej) <moneyaisle.com>
MoneyAisle is the next-generation online auction marketplace where consumers find great rates on bank CDs and High-Yield Savings accounts, absolutely free.

They launched the service on June 9, 2008. Mukesh Chatter - President & CEO / Bob Watterson - Vice President, Bank Partnerships. They launched a one month contest in July to crate some buzz and drive user recruitment. But I can't see any announcement post competition! (21/08/08)
When do you plan to publish the results?

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Coverage - FinovateStartup 2008 (San Francisco)
* Coverage - Finovate 2007 (New York)
* Video - Coverage of FinovateStartup on NetBanker and VisibleBanking
* Video - Interview with Aaron Patzer, Founder & CEO of Mint.com
* Video - Interview with Bob Homer, VP Product at CheckFree

Finovate 2008 Conference Demo Lineup Announced [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Fri Aug 22 02:41:38 UTC 2008

After looking at more than 100 companies, we've selected 24 finalists to present at our second annual Finovate Conference Oct. 14 in New York City (registration here). Three will emerge as Finovate Best of Show companies joining last year's winners: Mint, Mortgage Marvel from Mortgagebot, and Prosper (note 1).

In a single action-packed day, we'll see several financial startups launch, a few major product overhauls revealed, and a pile of new features shown to the public for the first time. It could be the single biggest "news day" in the history of online finance. Besides the amazing presenter lineup, the audience will contain many well-known industry analysts, press, banking and technology execs. Here are the subject that will be covered:

Person-to-person lending
Lead generation in financial services
Personal financial management and online banking
Mobile banking and payments
Payments/billing
Investing and retirement planning online
Security technologies
Social media and Web 2.0

Finovate 2008 Lineup (alphabetic order, note 2)
Below are the 21 companies we can name today, although two have not yet lifted the curtain on their product offering. The others, including two stealth startups, are keeping their identities hidden until closer to show time.

In all, seven of the companies presented at our sold-out Finovate 2007, three are graduates from Finovate Startup last April, and 14 are new to Finovate. But all 24 will be demo'ing substantial new products and/or features.

BillShrink <billshrink.com>
Boulevard R <boulevardR.com>
CheckFree <checkfree.com>
Check Point Software<checkpoint.com>
Credit Karma <creditkarma.com>
Digital Insight (Intuit) <digitalinsight.com>
FiLife (Dow Jones/IAC) <filife.com>
mFoundry <mfoundry.com>
Mint <mint.com>
MoneyAisle (NeoSaej) <moneyaisle.com>
mShift <mshift.com>
Inner8 <inner8.com>
LendingClub <lendingclub.com>
Pertuity Direct <pertuitydirect.com>
Quicken Online (Intuit) <quicken.com>
SmartHippo <smarthippo.com>
Sybase 365 <sybase.com/365>
Vidoop <vidoop.com>
Wesabe <wesabe.com>
WeSeed <weseed.com>
Yodlee <yodlee.com>

About Finovate 2008

Date: Oct. 14, 2008
Place: New York, NY (Crowne Plaza Times Square)
Cost: $995 through Sep. 30
Agenda: 12 demos in the morning (7 minutes each, NO POWERPOINT),
12 in the afternoon; each session followed by two hours of networking to meet with presenters for one-on-one discussions
Producer: Online Financial Innovations, publisher of Online Banking Report and Netbanker
Website: finovate.com
For videos of the sold-out Finovate 2007, click here

Press: Members of the media should contact Jim Bruene, jim@netbanker.com to secure a press pass.

Note:
1. Winners are selected by audience vote.
2. The list does not include two stealth startups and one company that will be named later

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Where is my traded market for cycles? [BankerVision]

Thu Aug 21 03:32:00 -0400 2008

There's quite a lot activity in the cloud space these days, what with Amazon, Google, and a pile of others entering the market. And it is probably quite true to say a few institutions are considering how they might use these services in substantive way down the track.

Let me make my own thoughts on this clear. In 10 years, 2 decades at the most, I believe banks will own neither data centres or networks. Networks are expensive things, and you always run out of money before you can provide enough bandwidth to everyone who wants to use them. At least, that's what happens when you build your own ones. Public networks are quite a different story, though.

And today's data centres, fixed to specific location, are almost never efficient to run. But new ones are springing up with access to environments useful for cooling, and lovely green hydroelectric power.

Let us now imagine the imposition of a national carbon emission tax on IT, which some countries are already considering. The impact is that inefficient data centres would get expensive very, very quickly. Why on earth would you own one with all that kind of uncertainty about it's future?

And a bank of any scale owns several data centres, not just one.

In any event, it will be economics of running infrastructures in a climate of energy price instability and regulatory uncertainty about carbon that force institutions to use cloud resources for core processing. I'd not be surprised to see banks putting their processing in locations that optimise the cash return per cycle, and switching locations around rather often.

You will be able to do a virtual data centre soon, one with all the security and enterprise operations features that banks presently demand from their private infrastructures.

But the point is that once you have a virtual data centre, able to move its physical location around as needed, you then need some certainty about its future costs of operation. Data centre operators are subject to significant variability in their cost of operation: their key input is energy, which is price-volatile (and becoming increasingly so).

So, where is the emerging traded exchange for cycles? Where are the futures contracts we'll want to get a price optimised across the decades we have to run systems? Are data centre operators even thinking about the financial instruments we'll need to have in order to use their shiny new facilities for anything at all mission critical?

I don't think so. At least, I haven't seen much evidence of it. But one thing I can say: bankers I've spoken to in lots places around the world are wondering at their absence. Perhaps it is an opportunity we -as in financial institutions collectively - pursue independently of the data centre providers?

The next security target [The Better Banking Blog]

Wed Aug 20 22:52:00 -0400 2008

Most Australian banks have successfully rolled out two-factor authentication, which means the security spotlight is starting to shift to the weaker links in our online economy.

Whether its retailers looking to offer financial services, or online social finance sites like Wesabe or Mint, it seems security vendors and analysts have found a new fish to fry.

At Online Banking Review’s security forum AusCERT general manager Graham Ingram told the audience “Everybody talks about the banks, my real concern is everyone else…we need to raise our focus from the financial sector to the online economy, which is really where all the action is”.

And in June research house TowerGroup argued most new online personal finance sites posed a security risk because they only offered single-factor authentication. They also called on the US Government to consider applying the FFIEC guidance regarding online authentication to these and other online sites that requested personal financial information.

I think this argument misses the point of what social finance sites actually do. To begin with they aggregate data and then allow users to decide which data is kept private and which is shared. It’s the sharing of a collective pool of data that helps users gain the most benefit from the service, while still protecting their individual information.

Secondly, and probably most importantly, consumers can’t use social finance sites to move money. The sites are simply a way of gaining access to information in a more convenient format, and where consumers feel comfortable about it, sharing that information with others.

While some analysts argue non-bank social finance sites should take a leaf from the book of their major bank counterparts, I would argue the opposite may be true.

For example, if you compare the Commonwealth Bank’s 24-page privacy policy statement with Wesabe’s Data Bill of Rights, you’ll get a feel for which group is doing a better job of educating consumers about how to manage what is essentially their data.

It could only be a matter of time before bankers start pointing the finger at social finance sites arguing they are less secure. Rather than help consumers I think this type of competitive behaviour would add to the overall level of confusion in the market about the protection of financial information.

I’ll be speaking on the topic of marketing security at next month’s BankTech forum, so I’m interested in your opinion. Should businesses compete on security? Do social finance sites like Wesabe deserve greater scrutiny over data management?

Could Mobile Payments Get a Boost from Lowly Stickers? [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Thu Aug 21 00:42:03 UTC 2008

Even though I have credit cards from Citibank, Wells Fargo, US Bank, American Express and Chase, I have never been offered the opportunity to add contactless payment capability to my card, so I still haven't experienced that particular wave of the future firsthand.

But it hasn't been too high up on my list of things to try, since it still requires carrying a piece of plastic or an additional device such as key-chain fob (inset). I don't see much benefit to tapping a piece of plastic compared to swiping it.

However, I do look forward to NFC-enabled mobile phones. But given the hurdles for adoption among carriers, payment processors, and issuing banks, I wasn't expecting that much before the next summer Olympics.

But now an interim workaround is being tested around the world: the contactless payment sticker. It's a quarter-sized sticker you plop on the back of your mobile phone making it instantly payment-enabled.

That allows consumers to leave their wallets at home, a nice benefit for outdoor enthusiasts, club goers, or anyone who doesn't want to worry about losing their wallet while on the go. Of course, we'll need a few million more contactless-enabled merchants before the wallet-free world is realistic for most, but widespread use of stickers could move that along (see note 1).

Who has it?
There are several rollouts under way around the world. For example:

Turkish banking giant GarantiBank recently won an industry-innovation award for its RFID sticker (press release). The sticker is produced by On Track Innovations. The bank began a pilot a year ago with several thousand Turkish customers.
Silicon Valley-based Blaze Mobile says it will be delivering a Blaze Debit MasterCard with PayPass payment sticker to subscribers of its $4.99/mo Blaze Wallet this month.
Though not yet connected to a major credit card, Malvern, PA-based USA Technologies launched its Pay Dot contactless sticker this spring (press release).

Note:
1. There are about 110,000 PayPass merchants worldwide, less than 1% of the 25 million locations that accept regular MasterCard cards.

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Japan's Influence on Mobile Banking in the U.S.? [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Wed Aug 20 20:11:00 -0400 2008

In recent days, there have been numerous articles, references, and stories related to Japan and how they could influence the future of mobile banking and payments here in the U.S.

Specifically, here are a few of the ones that caught my attention:

Aug 8 - Many Inputs as Citi Thinks Mobile in the U.S. - American Banker
"In Japan, more people go on the Internet from mobile devices than from computers, Mr. Kietz said.

'The common wisdom is that what is happening in Japan today is going to be happening in the developed world two years from now,' he said. 'There are going to be more, cool phones available, and use of the mobile browser is going to increase substantially.'"

Aug 18 - Mitsubishi UFJ to buy California bank - International Herald Tribune
"Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, one of the largest banks in Japan, agreed Monday to buy the remaining part of UnionBanCal that it did not already own for about $3.5 billion.

The transaction values UnionBanCal, which owns Union Bank of California, one of the 25 largest banks in the United States, at about $10.1 billion.

Mitsubishi is trying to expand beyond its relatively stagnant home market as Japanese companies seek to broaden their presence overseas and take advantage of a weaker dollar."

Aug 19 - Japan's Mobile Tech Too Quirky To Succeed Overseas? - Washington Post
"For all of the cutting edge mobile technology that Japanese consumers have routine access to, surprisingly little of it has made its way outside of the country. Its government, however, wants to change this, and will begin an "aggressive push" to market the technology overseas, reports AP."

Personally, I agree with Mr. Kietz and I'm excited to see Mitsubishi acquire an institution in the U.S. Their resources, knowledge, and experience will lead to significant advancements in technology and could help expedite the development and adoption of NFC.

Stay tuned on Visible-Banking.com! [Visible Banking]

Christophe — Wed Aug 20 14:35:21 -0400 2008

I am back! Some of you probably wondered what happened to me. "Has he stopped?", "has he moved on?", "was he bored?"... No, no and... no!

Creating my blog back in February 2007 was definitely one of the most gratifying things I have done in my life so far.

Visible-Banking.com enables me to share my passion for social media, my vision for the banking industry, and my expertise. I believe there hasn't been a week without meeting fantastic people, and discovering innovative products & services in the online finance space. I am consistently developing credibility and a trusted, international, network of contacts in the banking industry. I have the opportunity to spend some time with entrepreneurs and true visionnaries. I am regularly invited to speak at leading financial services events in the US (a country that I love), in the UK, and in Europe. What a great experience!

Stay tuned!
But for me blogging "goes with the flow". Sometimes, I need a break to concentrate on various other projects or activities. I used my recent break to do some research, and I have now a long list of topics I want to cover in my blog. I am also keen to shoot a couple of entertaining videos. I plan to launch a n ambitious competition soon: stay tuned!

My goal from now on is to post at least a couple of articles every week.

Subscribe to the most insightful blogs
Even though I haven't posted much in the last 8 weeks, I have always kept myself uptodate thanks to my fellow bloggers.

In addition to Visible-Banking.com, I strongly recommend to subscribe to the following leading blogs (the list is obviously not exhaustive):
* NetBanker, by Jim Bruene. And congrats to Eric Mattson who is instrumental in the success of the Finovate events
* theBankChannel, by Rob Findlay
* theBankWatch, by Colin Henderson
* William Azaroff's blog
* Mobile Banking, by Brandon McGee
* theBetterBanking blog, by Charis Palmer & Jen Storey
* BankerVision, by Dr James Gardner

Start blogging today!
I feel fortunate, and I would like to encourage everybody to start working on their online visibility and their personal brand. Don't wait, start now! The world is your oyster.
Do better than me, quicker, but please keep me posted. I would be pleased to shoot a video interview with you to convince more and more people and spread the word.

It could be intimidating when you think about it: dozen, hundreds, then thousands of people (some of them experts) read your posts and can share their comments, good or bad. But think about it: if they take the time to leave a comment, even a bad one, it is mission accomplished. You have started the discussion, and they are interested enough to take the time to express themselves. And free time is precious. Congrats.

Special note
Last but not least, it is critical to find some motivation and inspiration when you blog.
A special thanks to Miss T, my dear friend from Wesabe. A, I am so glad you started blogging at last. Your two posts are very well written, and you already have more comments than I had after a good dozen of posts! ;)

Visa, North America & Mobile [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Tue Aug 19 21:40:00 -0400 2008

"Visa, the global leader in payments, and eight leading North American financial institutions - PNC Bank, SunTrust Bank, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo in the United States, and Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank Financial Group, and Vancity in Canada - have agreed to initiate a pilot program with up to a total of 2,000 participants to test the delivery of real-time notification alerts on Visa accounts." Continue Reading >>

RBC Royal Bank

TD Canada Trust

Alerus Mobile Banking [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Tue Aug 19 21:34:00 -0400 2008

ClairMail, Inc., the leader in 2-way mobile phone-based customer interaction, today announced that Alerus Financial, a Midwestern-based financial services company offering banking and wealth management services, selected ClairMail to power its new mobile banking offering. Continue Reading>>

The valuation of innovation [BankerVision]

Tue Aug 19 02:56:55 -0400 2008

So here's a problem: what is the value of an innovation to a financial services firm? What is the value of a breakthrough versus incremental? And how can you guess it in advance so that you can win the money?

In my team, these are questions we wrestle with every day. The fact of the matter is that without a reasonable justification for doing innovation, noone wants to hand over the money. And that's money you need to have if you want keep innovating.

Ideally, one wants a justification in terms of the net effect on firm value. Wouldn't it be great to say that if we spend X on innovation, the share price will go up by Y%?

Actually, a study exists that tries to do that, reported in the March issue of the Journal of Marketing. "Innovation's Effect on Firm Value and Risk" is a scholarly article full of statistical stuff (and behind a paywall), but the headlines are these:

Breakthrough innovation provides windfall gains to firms, but may cause financial distress
Incremental innovation provides ordinary profits to firms
On average across sectors and markets, a breakthrough innovation increases the market value of a firm by 0.0847%. For a firm with an average market value of $4.9 billion, that translates to a windfall of about $4.2 million (NPV)

Here are my key takeaways. Firstly, doing incremental is going to pay the bills, as I've said on this blog on multiple occasions. You want to pay the bills otherwise, sooner or later, you're going to get shut down. But incremental isn't going to drive all that much direct growth.

Secondly, breakthroughs do give you the growth, but they aren't, on average, the transformational tickets to the future that innovators would like them to be. You'd have to do quite a lot of serial breakthrough to make a substantive dent in the fortunes of my bank, for example. But does anyone really have the appetite for risk that that would entail?

Anyway, those are estimates across industries. Trying to get something a bit better for the banking industry is challenging, so we've begun looking at specific innovations from our own history.

We have a scoring system that we use to evaluate potential ideas in 16 dimensions. The answers to these questions are weighted based on the priorities that our business units give us for various strategic questions. And out the end comes a number.

We went back and scored a basket of historical innovations, and then correlated that number with the actual returns from the innovation. It turns out our score, coupled with cost data, is quite a good predictor of the returns one might expect from an innovation, be it breakthrough or otherwise.

But we're still interested in the performance of financial services firms in general in the presence of innovation. Does anyone have any pointers to a study or other data?

Mobile Banking Updates [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Sun Aug 17 19:54:00 -0400 2008

Major banking group considers replacing BlackBerry with iPhone
"Global banking conglomerate HSBC is taking a hard look at using the iPhone 3G over its current fleet of corporate BlackBerry devices."

Absa introduces mobile money transfer via ATM network
"South Africa's Absa Bank has launched CashSend, a service that enables customers to send funds via ATMs to recipients that do not have a bank account or card."

Sybase CEO John Chen charts a mobile course
"The Hong Kong-born engineer, who became chief executive a year after his arrival, set about the slow task of rebuilding the Dublin-based company. Part of his strategy has been mining the then-nascent mobile software market. Sybase now has annual revenue that tops $1 billion."

Mpayy Promises Payments from Anywhere
"Although Conrad Sheehan thinks he has come up with a way to provide the mobility factor in the formula for ecommerce success, he's an unlikely dot-com entrepreneur at age 41."

Mobile Banking Commercial on YouTube [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Sun Aug 17 19:49:00 -0400 2008

First Sales Report on an iPhone Finance App: Tipulator Downloaded 3,200 Times [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Sat Aug 16 01:13:33 UTC 2008

According to TechCrunch, the $0.99 tip calculator app from TapTapTap has been downloaded 3,200 times in the month it's been available. Net income to the developer, after Apple takes its 30% cut, is $2,200.

TapTapTap also markets a much more sophisticated location-based search tool that has generated $50,000 in revenues for the developer.

Tipulator ranked number 20 in our Aug. 5 rundown of the top-20 banking and finance apps. Today it ranked number 27.

Apple ranks the most popular apps within each category, but does not provide download totals. Tipulator numbers were provided by developer.

What it means
1. iPhone users, so far, are willing to pay for apps. Who would have thought that more than 3,000 people would go to the trouble to download an app to help them multiply their bill times 15% to 20%? And there are two tip calculators that ranked higher in the App Store.

2. There is real demand for mobile financial tools, even very simple ones. Financial institutions should consider launching a branded calculator app in the Apple App Store.

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Actionable Insights [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Perry) — Fri Aug 15 09:27:00 -0400 2008

Tommy Thompson, president of iNSPIRE!, has posted a great article this morning on Advertising Age's blog regarding the mistakes often made in marketing to the Hispanic community...its worth a read!

Lending Club Adds Secondary Market to Updated S1 [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Fri Aug 15 02:32:26 UTC 2008

Lending Club filed an amended S1 statement, a positive sign that it is moving through the registration process in a timely fashion.

As we noted here after reading the original S1, Lending Club has indeed added a secondary marketing piece to its business plan. Holders of its notes (aka individual lenders), will be able to sell their Lending Club loans through a market run by an undisclosed third party.

Here's the pertinent section from pp. 50-51 of the August 1 S1 (note: the name of the partnering broker-dealer is not disclosed; hence, the blank space below):

Trading System
Lender members may not transfer their Notes except through the resale trading system operated by , a registered broker-dealer. This trading system is an Internet-based trading system on which Lending Club lender members who establish a brokerage relationship with the registered broker-dealer operating the trading system may offer their Notes for sale. In this section, we refer to lender members who have established such brokerage relationships as “subscribers.”

Subscribers may post orders to sell their Notes on the trading system at prices established by the subscriber. Other subscribers will have the opportunity to view these prices, along with historical information from the original loan posting for the member loan corresponding to the Note, an updated credit score range of the borrower member and the payment history for the Note.

I skimmed the updated S1 and didn't see anything else particularly noteworthy. Another blogger, Doughroller.net, noted that the company is adding more credit factors to its loan-pricing model. You can see the new formulas in the S1 filing (pp. 36-38).

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Mobile Payments Update - TowerGroup [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Thu Aug 14 22:24:00 -0400 2008

Mobile payments to be disruptive industry force - TowerGroup
"Mobile remittances - a person-to-person payment system that is cross-border in nature and involves mobile data applications at either end of the transaction - is moving in on a total global remittances market of a half trillion dollars annually (USD). New TowerGroup research finds that the accelerating investments being made in ubiquitous mobile payment platforms will be a disruptive industry force."

Reward Checking Account Results: $5.5 billion Down, $2.994 Trillion to Go [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Thu Aug 14 03:23:08 UTC 2008

In the year or so that they've been widely available, so-called reward checking, those high-yielding accounts that require a hefty number of debit card transactions (see note 1), have attracted quite a following.

But besides the number of blog posts and press mentions, we've had few other metrics in which to gauge their success. Until now. In an email to me yesterday, the company behind many of the accounts, BancVue, laid out the totals rewards checking results across its client base:

381 financial institutions live
610,000 reward checking accounts
$5.5 billion on deposit in the accounts
$9,000 average balance
Opening more than 13,000 accounts per week (700,000 annual run rate)
Average of more than $14 million in deposits per financial institution
Average of 1,600 accounts per financial institution

Although $5 billion isn't even the rounding error across the entire $3-trillion U.S. retail deposit market, it's real money to the smaller banks and credit unions offering the program.

Notes:
1. Most accounts require 10 to 12 debit transactions per month in order to earn the high yield. For more info, see our previous coverage and Finovate Startup video here.
2. Upper-right graphic comes courtesy of First State Bank, Gainesville, TX.

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Young & Free targets Gen Y in Texas, but they're not alone [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Brady Walen) — Wed Aug 13 15:47:00 -0400 2008

After reading so much about the successes of Young & Free Alberta in targeting Generation Y, we knew it was only a matter of time before a similar concept would be introduced in the United States. And this week it was; Young & Free Texas was launched by Texas Dow Employees Credit Union.

In reading the news and visiting the site, I initially thought the Texas initiative would generate the same kind of buzz and success, if not more, that it did for Commonwealth Credit Union in Alberta. This is especially true as we havn't seen other institutions going to equal lengths to target Gen Y.

But it looks like Texas-based Resource One Credit Union is launching an extremely similar initiative this week: my life, my money. Not only are these initiatives both targeting members of Generation Y in Texas - but also use social media in their marketing, are offering a similar checking/savings account, and are intending to hire a spokesperson - with nearly identical perks.

It will be interesting to see how both are received and talked about during their respective searches for spokespeople - and in the months that follow.

Update: there are a couple great discussions discussing both of these accounts/initiatives in depth, one on Everything CU and another on The Financial Brand.

Intersections Inc.'s Identity Guard Brings Back 6-Month Free Trial and Adds Free Credit Report and Score [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Wed Aug 13 02:36:36 UTC 2008

Identity Guard, the direct-to-consumer credit-monitoring brand from Intersections, has a new logo, homepage design, and a compelling new offer: six months of free credit monitoring (Good Start option) PLUS 30 days of access to your credit report and score (see previous look here).

And unlike most offers in this industry, this freebie is made with no obligation. Intersections does take billing info as part of the sign-up process, but unlike most others, they will not automatically begin charging a monthly fee at the end of the six-month free trial (see note 1). Last year, Intersections offered the six-month free trial (post here), but did not include the free credit report/score (see note 2).

Identity Guard hompage (11 August 2008)

Separately, I ran across the company's banner ad today at Amazon's IMDB site (below). Here, the company is taking a more traditional approach, offering a 30-day free trial plus $3/mo discount on its flagship Total Protection service (regularly $17.99/mo).

Identity Guard banner at IMDB (12 August 2008)

Landing page from the IMDB banner (12 Aug 2008)

Notes:
1. I tested the free offer last year and can confirm that they did NOT bill me for the service after it expired, nor did they pester me to become a paying customer at the end of the trial.

2. See our Online Banking Report on Credit Monitoring Services for more information.

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Wizzit Mobile Banking in South Africa [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Tue Aug 12 20:46:00 -0400 2008

Wizzit CEO, Brian Richardson, and colleagues describe the Wizzit model, including tackling the "Three A's = Affordability + Accessibility + Availability" to give millions of previously unbanked individuals access to a bank account...

I found this YouTube video on Joost Bonsen's blog.

Mobile Banking Articles - Aug 11 [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Mon Aug 11 19:58:00 -0400 2008

Here are a few interesting articles.

Many Inputs as Citi Thinks Mobile in U.S.
"Citigroup Inc., which is taking a variety of approaches as it introduces its mobile banking services around the world, plans to put to work the knowledge gained abroad as it fine-tunes its U.S. offerings."

I was drawn to the following quote...

"The market is giving us feedback," about consumers' usage habits, Mr. Kietz said, and clear support for the browser model is "defining mobile banking in the U.S. in the near term."

Japan’s super-advanced mobile web: Too unique to serve as a global blueprint?
"In Japan, since 2006 more people have been accessing the web through cell phones than through PCs. Is this a picture of things to come in other countries?"

IBM Makes Mobile Push
"When it comes to big-business technology, you could argue it’s not a party until IBM shows up. Not only is Big Blue the top seller of business software, its services division is also the biggest global provider of hands-on tech advice. So when IBM (IBM) makes big mobile announcement, it’s worth a listen."

Looking For An ATM? Text Away! [Banking Kismet]

Mon Aug 11 17:13:51 -0400 2008

While building a list of people to contact for BarCampBankCharleston, I came across a new service offered by Charleston Area FCU, one of our local credit unions.� Credit union members of any CU can now use SMS on their mobile phones to find the nearest ATM.� Here’s what you need to do:

1. Send a text to MYCOOP (692667) from any mobile phone. In the body of the
text, enter an address (with city, state), zip code or intersection (with city,
state).

2. In less than a minute, the service will reply with the nearest CO-OP Network
surcharge-free to that location.

3. If you want additional ATM locations, simply reply MORE to the message and
additional surcharge-free ATM location will be sent to your mobile device.

MYCOOP is a new enhancement to our ATM Locator that enables you to
find any of the 25,000 surcharge-free ATMs via a text message from your mobile
phone. Only standard text messaging rates apply.

- Charleston Area FCU

Wesabe Adds Twitter Integration for Account Updates [NetBanker]

Jim Bruene http://www.netbanker.com — Mon Aug 11 19:27:36 UTC 2008

Wesabe's latest feature, the ability to update your account via Twitter, isn't likely to find too many users in the short-term. However, it's a great marketing move that could see a fair amount of uptake over time (see note 1).

Although there are less than 2 million Twitter users, the company is currently white hot, one of the most talked about Internet companies (see Google trends below, which shows Twitter search volume is 7x or 8x that of "phishing"). So why not draft off Twitter's hype, as long as it's not too costly?

How it works
After logging in to Wesabe and providing your Twitter name, you then simply send a private or public message (aka Tweets) to Wesabe's Twitter account. Wesabe then adds the expense to your cash-tracking account. You can include merchant name, expense categories, and descriptions to the transaction (see examples below).

Most common: Update via private message (no one else will see)

Less likely: Update via public message (your friends will receive it and if you have an open feed, anyone could see it)

Google Trends for Twitter vs. Phishing (9 Aug 2008)

Note:
1. Updating accounts via text message and email has much wider appeal. It's one of the recommended items in our personal finance feature set. See our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features for more info.

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The death of statements? [The Better Banking Blog]

Wed Aug 06 21:25:00 -0400 2008

I’ve just finished writing a piece for Online Banking Review looking at the growth in marketing and uptake of online statements. There’s no doubt consumers are warming to the idea, but I wonder when we’ll get to the point where statements (online or otherwise) are irrelevant.

Consumer focused sites like Wesabe and Mint are already doing a great job of delivering consumers information in a much more user-friendly way. We’ll be hearing from Wesabe VP of marketing at Online Banking Review’s Innovative Marketing forum coming up in Sydney on August 28.

Last week I was treated to an online demo of US software firm Jwaala’s MoneyTracker tool, and it certainly lives up to their claim that it’s the future of Internet banking.

The natural language search and categorisation of transactions on offer from institutions using Jwaala is leaps and bounds ahead of any local Internet banking offering I’ve seen. Jwaala also delivers account aggregation, transaction alerts via RSS, SMS and email, an electronic document vault, and budgeting tools.

“We’re moving from the one way Internet where you could show people limited information to a two way Internet where people pull the information they want from your system” says Kelly Dowell, vice president of business development with Jwaala.

Retail customers aren’t the only ones winning from the trend towards aggregated financial information. Kiwi software start-up Xero is preparing to target the small business market in Australia. Xero’s online accounting system is designed to help small business people manage their transactions, invoices and GST. Bank statement data can be automatically uploaded into the Xero dashboard on a daily basis and business owners can use the tool to generate and export real-time reports for their accountants/advisers.

Which poses the question, why bother delivering online statements if customers can pull all the information they need in a format they want from online banking tools like MoneyTracker and Xero?

Mobile Banking from PNC [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Wed Aug 06 20:40:00 -0400 2008

A few minutes ago I was doing some research on business mobile banking and I stumbled across this result for a PNC product.

Now, you won't find any reference to mobile banking on their website if you go through the "front door," and I don't believe they've made a formal announcement. However, it certainly looks like they are close to a launch. You'll also notice that they have gone with a downloadable solution, and based upon their list of compatible devices I'd venture to say that this is an mFoundry solution.

If you click on the link you'll land on this page.

Should You Really be on YouTube? [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Brady Walen) — Wed Aug 06 15:39:00 -0400 2008

According to a feature in the latest ABA Bank Marketing Magazine you should be. The title of the article You Should be on YouTube raises huge concerns, as it implies that all readers should have a presence on the website. While I was a bit surprised to read such a definite statement, I was more alarmed by the statement that followed:

“If you are not, your competition might beat you to it.”

Who cares if your competition beats you to it? If a YouTube video doesn’t support your marketing efforts and overall strategy, you shouldn’t waste resources developing, posting and managing content – especially for the sake of having a video online before your competition does.

Overall, the article does make good points about blogs and podcasts, but sends the wrong message in being so definitive about being on YouTube. We can all think of institutions who have no business posting videos online; and there are plenty of wildly successful institutions who aren’t on YouTube and aren't worried that their competition is – for many institutions it just doesn’t make sense.

Mobile Banking Updates - Aug 5th [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Tue Aug 05 20:16:00 -0400 2008

Fundtech and Firethorn to Provide Mobile Corporate Cash Management
"Fundtech Ltd., a market leader in global transaction banking solutions, and mobile commerce enabler Firethorn Holdings, LLC, a Qualcomm company announced today that the two companies will work together to add mobile connectivity to Fundtech's CASHplus cash management system."

The Grameen-Obopay Bank A Billion Initiative
"Obopay Inc., a service provider for payments via mobile phones, and Grameen Solutions, the company globally recognized for promoting economic and social development through information and communications technology, have announced an alliance - 'The Grameen-Obopay Bank A Billion Initiative', to use mobile technology to deliver banking services to a billion of the world's poorest people by 2018."

Banks Down Under Monetize Mobile
"The National Bank and ANZ, related New Zealand banks, have been charging for mobile services—as have all their competitors—since they went live with the offering more than a year ago."

No Twitter Brand? Fail Whale For You [Banking Kismet]

Mon Aug 04 18:03:16 -0400 2008

Twitter has been getting a lot of press lately.� As more and more people hear about it, they tend to drift between what Morriss Partee calls the 4 Phases of Twitter.

One side effect is that as Twitter gains in popularity, Twitter names are being snatched up.� Have you secured your brand on Twitter?� There have already been instances of people posing as employees of big companies and famous people.� One example is Exxon Mobil.� Another is marketing guru Seth Godin.

By at least reserving your company and/or product name, you can preserve how your brand is perceived on the web.� Even if you don’t see the significance of Twitter, it only takes about 2 minutes to sign up and it’s free.� As an example, my employer obtained www.firstfederal.com about 10 years ago.� Do you know how many First Federal banks there are in the United States?� Chances are you know of one within 100 miles of you and it has nothing to do with us.

Now, your name may not be as generic as ours, but it’s just as important that you act sooner rather than later.� Banks and credit unions are already being regularly discussed on Twitter.� By reserving your brand, you can at least be somewhat ready when your name starts flying around the Twitterverse.� Oh, and twitter.com/firstfederal has already been taken.

Click here to view a list of companies that are already on Twitter.

Image by Yiying Lu

Mobile as a 2nd Authentication Factor [Mobile Banking]

noreply@blogger.com (brandon@bmcgee.com) — Sun Aug 03 19:27:00 -0400 2008

I'm often asked the question, "is it safe to use mobile banking?"

And my response is...Yes! In fact, I'd argue the mobile banking clients are less likely to experience significant fraud because they have the ability to more closely monitor their account activity - anytime, anywhere.

Plus, with the advent of tools such as PhoneFactor, I contend that your mobile device can actually make it even safer to utilize other banking channels as well.

If you're not familiar, PhoneFactor utilizes a phone call as a second form of authentication. Think token without the extra hardware.

Here's how the service was described by BTN in the article Ten Technology Companies to Watch 2008, "When a customer enters their username and password to an online banking site, PhoneFactor intercepts the signal and sends an encrypted message to the PhoneFactor voice response unit. The customers cell phone rings, and they’re asked to push a button or enter a code if they’d like to login. If not, some configurations allow users to immediately report fraud."

They also have a demo - check it out.

Another Thought on Relevance [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Perry) — Sun Aug 03 11:43:00 -0400 2008

The issue of relevance is on my mind again this week as the world prepares for the summer Olympic Games in Beijing. If you scan through the list of corporate sponsors of the Olympics you’ll see the venerable name of Kodak. What you may not know is that last October the company whose name was once synonymous with film and cameras announced that it was ending its role as a top corporate sponsor of the Olympics after this summer's games – an ongoing sponsor relationship that began over 100 years ago with the first modern games in 1896.

At the time of the announcement, Elizabeth Noonan, Kodak's director of brand management, stated "As we complete the transformation of Kodak, it makes sense for us to take a new direction." What she didn’t say was that Kodak hasn’t transformed its business model as fast as the changes in related technology or consumer expectation. They simply didn’t adjust to the transition from film photography to digital photography as it was happening. When was the last time you dropped off a roll of film for developing? Professional and amateur photographers alike have numerous options today including digital cameras, digital printing and online photo management applications like Flickr. As Kodak scrambles to compete, they have experienced massive net losses and its workforce has dropped to half what it was in 2003.

What can the financial services industry learn from this example? A great deal! Look at how new technology within this industry has already changed consumer behaviors across the demographic spectrum. By paying close attention to the shifts in your industry and your market, and proactively adapting to those changes, you have a greater likelihood of remaining relevant to your customer and avoiding the same fate as Kodak.

Ultimate customer communication transparency [The Better Banking Blog]

Jen Storeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11194754082914047267noreply@blogger.com — Wed Jul 30 00:50:00 -0400 2008

To paraphrase Oscar Levant, there is a fine line between genius and insanity. The recent blog discussion on a new fee structure being introduced at South Australian based credit union Savings & Loans treads that fine line. Some would say it is insanity to allow such a public display of complaints about fees. Others will see it for the genius that it is.

Savings & Loans announced the changed fee structure, the first in many years, in mid June. Customers were informed by letter but Savings & Loans CEO Greg Connor also posted to the company blog the pending changes. The online discussion continues today, a month after the initial announcement.

The feedback and questions from credit union members on the CEO Blog was passionate and fiery. Unhappy customers posted competitor and aggregator sites in their responses; many stated they had closed their accounts. Yet while members posted their heartfelt responses to the new fees, Connor took the time to respond regularly to their concerns and questions.

Savings & Loans, like many credit unions, prides itself on being as open and transparent as possible on all aspects of the business. The discussion surrounding the fee structure exemplifies this philosophy.

As Connor himself states in one response, “I don’t think there are many organisations that would publicly post this sort of discussion, especially when some people are directly promoting our competitors.”

A core strategic element of most financial institutions is to be customer focused. Yet few would be brave enough to publish the complaints and concerns of their customers in an open forum. Taking feedback directly from customers in such a public manner is the embodiment of being customer focused.

While the fees were developed in conjunction with customer focused groups, it is the online discussion that differentiates Savings & Loans from other financial institutions. These customers have been given a voice and an open, direct channel to the CEO via the blog.

Bill Gates acknowledged that “your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Savings & Loans have embraced that philosophy and should be applauded for providing such absolute transparency.

Several customers have acknowledged this openness and transparency as proof that Savings & Loans is not like other banks and financial organisations.

One customer identified as Jess posted, “Hats off to Greg for allowing these comments (to be) posted on the blog, and for having the guts to respond to them intelligently and diplomatically. Imagine what the Commonwealth bank CEO's blog would look like. You would need to take time off work to read that one, I think.”

Similarly, Steve K posted, “Thanks for having this blog - it's a great idea and a credit to your organisation.”

It should be applauded that at least one financial services organisation is willing to take criticism and openly discuss it with their customers. The posting from customers on the forums is usually only found on internal customer feedback surveys, not displayed for the world to see.

Will other financial institutions be brave enough to follow this ultimate act of transparency from Savings & Loans?

There’s Gotta Be A Better Way [Banking Kismet]

Mon Jul 28 21:35:19 -0400 2008

I hate Walmart.� Actually, I hate waiting in line at Walmart.� Nothing frustrates me more than seeing half the lines open, the “10 Items or Less” lines being ten people deep and the other lines with people doing their monthly Walmart shopping while I hold five items.� The self-checkout lines are empty because they either aren’t working or it’s just too complicated to figure out.

Why can’t the big box retailers have a better checkout system?� With the Apple Store opening here, I was reminded of how Apple handles checkouts.� The employees carry those neat wireless devices with a card reader so that the process is quick and painless.� The big box retailers have almost everything in place to offer a similar experience.

I have noticed that they have price scanners mounted for anyone to use.� It would be great if I could scan my item and then wave my customer loyalty card to add the item to my “shopping cart”.� Once I had walked around the store and finished scanning my items, I could then wave my phone or contactless card to pay.� Finally, they could email the receipt to me and send a confirmation SMS so I could get past that pesky greeter.� Having a receipt printer on the scanner wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

The real cost of systems neglect [The Better Banking Blog]

Mon Jul 28 01:09:00 -0400 2008

The repercussions of Westpac’s latest “technical glitch” are still being felt by consumers and businesses alike. On the night of July 2 Westpac processed a batch of payments twice resulting in thousands of accounts being double debited or credited.

The bank moved quickly to redirect the millions of dollars of transactions affected, but not before accounts became overdrawn, fees were charged and hundreds of people were left wondering why they got paid twice.

Westpac would be wise to refund the penalty fees arising out of this error, and it’s likely this is what it is doing, but what about additional costs?

Today I received a letter from Medecins Sans Frontieres. It’s a charity I’m happy to support, largely because more than 80 per cent of money donated to the group ends up where it’s needed most, and not covering administration costs.

Of course those administration costs have now increased thanks to Westpac’s error and the need for MSF to explain why it double-debited my account. Call centre staff at MSF must now spend time answering questions and chasing up funds – time and money that could be better spent on MSF’s core activity of sending doctors to crisis areas where they are needed most.

I’ve written before about whether customers should be compensated for downtime. It’s generally accepted that all banks will have downtime and mistakes do happen. The thing is there seems to be a pattern of downtime at Westpac that requires serious action.

Looking at recent documented periods of downtime at the bank reveals it's high time Westpac invested in its systems. Periods of online banking downtime in May 2006, December 2006, and February 2007 were followed by 2 days of online banking downtime in September 2007, more downtime caused by “multiple hardware failure”, and a complete communications system meltdown that affected branch, call centre and online banking systems on June 1 this year.

With a merger with St George Bank nearing, Westpac has ordered a review of its core banking systems and technology operations. Will this be the trigger for the bank to make changes that have been needed for years?

A Different Way to Bank [The Garland Group - Home]

henry — Thu Jul 24 15:49:00 UTC 2008

As a baby boomer, the traditional branch location continues to have some value for use of a community room, safe deposit boxes and just looking your banker in the eye; but the X & Y generations see little to no value in using the traditional branch. Yeah, they may have to go once in a while to get a cashiers check, or sign loan papers, but it???s an exception instead of the rule.

On a recent core selection consulting engagement, I was working with a very traditional well-established community bank in a University town that was looking for ways to bring together the students with their bank and the community. The university offers a ???debit card/credit card??? that is logoed with the mascot of the university and they typically bid the card out to whichever bank is interested. It was difficult for the community bank with 7 branches to compete, and they always were competitive because of influences in the community. However, with the larger banks coming to town, they are having much more difficulty. Yeah, they have an older ATM at the student center and they have tried several other things, but nothing they did brought the students or the faculty closer to the bank.

What does your 20-something and 30-something look for in a bank?

Ease of use…no more than a good internet banking application. Convenience…it???s there 24/7 before or after their hot date or party. Facebook or Myspace…sense of belonging and connecting….What?

I???m sure there are others, but you think about #???s 1 & 2. EVERY bank in a community has these, some better than others. The only issue we are dealing with today is making it easy and convenient. With compliance issues like multi-factor authentication, we SURE have not made it easier, but we do what we have to for security purposes. (This is a discussion for another time.)

The real problem is we have NO way to ???connect??? with these younger generations! Now I know it???s not easy and as an old guy, I say do like I did and check it out yourself. Well, that???s just not working. What if the bank provided the students/community with an online social network that THEY ran and THEY delivered content? Allow them to invite friends (like Myspace and Facebook), let them rate the local hot spots, let them privately or publicly ???talk??? with their friends, let them discuss the bank???s services, give suggestions and/or ratings, discuss the best profs, etc. etc. This dialog could go, on and on for years and years. Now, I know some of you are thinking, ???This is crazy???, and to be honest, I don???t know if it would work. The success would be based on content and involvement of the students within the framework provided by the Bank.

The bank could be the catalyst and would have plenty of opportunity to have discussion with the community. They may want to have a community manager to chime in on some of the dialog and add pertinent content. And, if the community got behind it, Voila! In my mind, this a good way for the Bank to spend ???Community development??? dollars.

Just a little food for thought from an old-school guy!!!

Time Sure Flies [Banking Kismet]

Wed Jul 23 10:35:08 -0400 2008

With all the hustle and bustle, I didn’t realize that I’ve been blogging for a year now.� I must admit that so far, it’s been a lot of fun.� I’ve been able to connect with a lot of people and been introduced to a lot of ideas and technologies.

Thanks to all that have continued to be avid readers and share their ideas.� Looking over my blog stats, the most popular posts have dealt with mobile banking and Walmart’s MoneyCard.� I’d just like to take a moment to discuss those two topics.

How to Get a No-Fee Walmart MoneyCard

By far, this has been the most popular post.� It kind of makes me wonder why banks/credit unions don’t offer a similar product.� I don’t know the exact number of Walmart cardholders, but from the complaints I’ve heard from our customers, I think customers would love a card like this.� Eventually, overdraft fees will become a very sensitive topic.� You can already find some very public posts about how banks are handling their overdraft fees.

As people become more educated about fees, this particular fee income could dry up.� Why not offer pre-paid cards to your customers?� This could open up that unbanked/underbanked market that we all hear about.

Mobile Banking

Why the iPhone Doesn’t Matter For Mobile Banking has gotten a lot of hits.� With the release of the iPhone 3G, there have been a slew of articles concerning the iPhone and mobile banking.� A few of the popular ones are by Ron Shevlin, Morriss Partee, Jim Bruene and Mark Schwanhausser.

Me, I think mobile banking will become a vital channel.� Here in SC, we have a lot more rural customers with poor internet connections.� These same customers tend to have cell phones, which opens a new channel.� After reviewing surveys and actually talking to customers, I feel this is a channel that we can’t ignore.� Yes, there is no ROI at the moment, but the same could be said for online banking ten years ago.

As for the iPhone’s impact, I still think it won’t drive mobile banking, for most of the industry anyways.� According to our web stats, BlackBerry users still access our site more the iPhone users, though the iPhone is gaining.� But most BlackBerry users got their phone through their company.� iPhone users tend to be on the leading edge of technology.

The typical cell phone owner is not going to get a high end phone with a data plan.� Once the price of data plans drop, then we’ll see an increase mobile web users.� Until then, adoption of mobile banking through the mobile web will be slow.�

To put it in perspective, Mark mentions that Jack Henry’s goDough is at 65 banks and has a total of 6,559 users.� That’s about 100 users per bank.� Bank of America now has 1 million mobile web users.� I wish BB&T would release their numbers since they offer SMS alerts.� I know they have way more than 6500 users.� It wouldn’t surprise me if they sign up that many per week, with no major advertisements.

Over the last year, it’s been fun watching the banking industry evolve.� I look forward to many more and I’m glad you’ve decided to join me.� Here’s to many more.

Credit crunch drives savings innovation [The Better Banking Blog]

Wed Jul 23 01:54:00 -0400 2008

The credit crunch and subsequent pressure on financial services marketers to raise deposits from customers is proving a real innovation driver.

Last month, we reported on ING DIRECT’s moves to enable online identity verification, and more recently we’ve seen a shift in the type of deposit products on offer, for example CommSec’s integrated trading and cash management solution.

Now a bank in the US has moved to take on the growing number of start-ups that are helping consumers integrate their personal finance information in one place.

PNC Bank has combined a fee-free transaction, savings and high-yield account in an online offering dubbed PNC Virtual Wallet.

This combination of products is not new, but it’s the added tools and services PNC has provided that makes the offering innovative.

The account comes with a calendar that allows customers to track their payday, bill payments and “danger days” when their account might be at risk of becoming overdrawn. Customers can also set up a wish list of items they are saving for and track their progress against the goal. Transferring funds between accounts can be done by sliding a visual “money bar” that does a good job of taking away account jargon and simply assigns funds to three categories – scheduled out, free, and reserve.

PNC has also introduced the term “punch the pig” for its tool that encourages customers to set up regular transfers to their high-yield savings account.

Start-ups Jwaala, Wesabe and Mint take the concept one step further by giving consumers insight into their transactions across all the institutions they bank with.

The difference is PNC has set about building loyalty to its brand by developing consumer friendly tools and a promotional website that is clearly targeted at Gen Y.

I wonder if we’ll see similar offerings from Australian institutions looking to carve out a new market for deposits?

Site Selection: “The devil is in the details” [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Brady Walen) — Mon Jul 21 16:11:00 -0400 2008

In a recent Retail Delivery Insights newsletter from BAI, Gary D. Stein stressed the importance of attention to details in selecting sites for new branch locations. Not a surprise, but important nonetheless.

“Stein recommended that banks conduct a thorough analysis of the specific site and surrounding trade area. He advised banks to consider market potential, population demographics, financial product usage and demand, population density and the competitive landscape.”

And while these elements certainly go above and beyond simply relying on intuition, I’d also add the importance of psychographic data and an in-person assessment of the proposed site location to the list. Drilling down to this level of detail is necessary in today’s increasingly competitive landscape – especially as institutions adopt more specific target markets and the average new branch is likely to require a multi-million dollar investment.

An article from July 5th’s Chicago Tribune discusses the approach that allowed Starbucks to identify successful locations: “In evaluating locations, Starbucks looked past commonly used community demographic information to analyze nitty-gritty specifics, like the education level in various neighborhoods. It also studied traffic flow on both sides of the street, to make sure drives could make an easy right turn for their java fix on their way to the office.”

The commonly used community demographic information is a good starting point, but doesn’t provide the specifics relative to consumer behaviors, access or local draw which could dramatically impact the success of a new branch location. Starbucks strayed from the more scientific and detail-focused approach in recent years - which resulted in its recently announced decision to close underperforming locations.

Stein echos a point we've heard before: "branch placement may accounting for as much as 65% of its success." With so much hinging on location, you'd think the same attention to detail would be a part of any institution’s expansion efforts.

Banktastic.com Begins Partnership with Texas Bankers Association [The Garland Group - Home]

lisa — Fri Jul 18 19:58:00 UTC 2008

Social Knowledge Site Introduces New Media to Banking Industry.

With social networking sites quickly taking over in the consumer space, Texas Bankers Association is the first to participate in this new online service that puts social media in the hands of its members. Texas Bankers Association, the largest state association in the US, signed a contract with Banktastic.com on Tuesday to setup a private online community to be available exclusively to their members. TBA plans to first try it with their HR & Training professionals with the potential to expand to the entire association at a later date.

Brad Garland, Banktastic???s CEO, says the contract shows signs that the banking industry is ready to step up and evolve with the changing times:

???Texas Bankers Association will be one of the first associations in the country to embrace and empower their members through a social community with Banktastic. They are positioning themselves as innovators in the financial services space by leveraging the power of the Web to interact and engage with their members better.???

The private network will be showcased to Texas Bankers Association members at their Human Resources & Training Conference on August 13-15, 2008. More information about the conference can be found here. For more information about private networks on Banktastic or to schedule an interview with Brad Garland, please email brad@banktastic.com.

Economic Challenge and Great Opportunity! [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (joe sullivan) — Thu Jul 17 16:47:00 -0400 2008

An Amazing Dichotomy

Recently we saw evidence of two starkly different approaches to business in our changing economy, how it creates opportunities for some businesses and can negatively affect other businesses. Almost at the same time, you saw images of people standing in line to withdraw their deposits at Indy Mac Bank, while also seeing long lines snaked around just about every Apple store in the country, in anticipation of the release of the latest and greatest iPhone.

There was, and still is a huge emotional component in both of these situations. I believe that emotional connection is the key ingredient in keeping customers happy and wanting to do business with you. Apple knows this. Of course, they are positioned as the provider of technology which is easy to use and fun. But, they have also created almost what I would call a “movement” where customers simply “must have” the latest and greatest version of their products. So while we could say that Apple targets only upscale techies, we would be wrong, because they appear to target people who respond to easy and fun, words which speak to emotion.

Indy Mac Bank, on the other hand, also has some emotional content occurring with its customers at the present time. People are concerned about their money, and, more importantly, the emotions that are tied to their deposit account. Emotions surrounding retirement security, resources to take that dream vacation or having the piece of mind of financial security. All of these are emotional situations and bankers have proven expertise in addressing them with customers. Now is not the time to be shy.

So what does all of this mean from my perspective? Bankers should be using this time of perceived uncertainty to make a deeper connection with their customers through education, discussion and outreach. For bankers, using their knowledge and expertise to help quell customer’s fears right now may be the very best thing they can do to create an even more loyal customer base. Fear is a powerful emotion, one that is running far too rampant right now, and bankers have the opportunity to use their expertise to help customers face these fears.

The time is now.

Why we're banking on more iPhone apps [The Better Banking Blog]

Thu Jul 17 01:57:00 -0400 2008

A big debate is under way as to whether the iPhone will revolutionise banking.

Some say iPhone banking is just a dumbed-down version of Internet banking for a 2-inch screen. Others see the huge potential for banks to bring iPhone users a range of useful apps that will make their lives easier.

Australia’s ANZ bank argues the iPhone will make Internet banking more accessible. But Bankervision blogger James Gardner argues if people aren't going to do the Internet, what chance have we got of getting them onto apps on mobile phones?

All of these points are valid, but in dissing the hype many analysts have overlooked the general trend towards convergence and the mobile Internet.

As the proud owner of a shiny new iPhone, I’m completely sold on the benefits of convergence. Thanks to one upgrade I can now leave behind my portable laptop, voice recorder, iPod and digital camera (ok, my camera is much better than the one on offer in my iPhone, but if it means traveling more lightly I can cope with 2 megapixels).

Since I converted to the iPhone my laptop has remained unused at home. I’m quite happy to browse news, emails, video and websites on my iPhone simply because of the excellent user interface Apple has delivered.

The iPhone may not revolutionise banking but it does have the potential to revolutionise the mobile Internet.

With more intelligent handsets in hands than ever before consumers will expect banking applications that are simple and smart enough to take advantage of the iPhone’s location awareness.

I’m disappointed at the lack of Australian financial services apps on offer in my iPhone app directory.

Why can’t I use my iPhone to locate my bank’s nearest ATM (Westpac are you listening) so I can avoid ATM fees?

And what about an Aussie tool (like Wesabe for iPhone) for viewing my account balances across more than one institution, or tracking my spending against my budget?

Many banks are still struggling to build simplicity into their online applications. When you’re dealing with users of the mobile Internet the bar is set even higher.

Streamlining back-office requirements into a user-friendly interface is not an easy task. But consumers have come to expect simplicity – one-click applications, click to call, pre-populated forms and the ability to save partly filled applications and pick them up at another time. These are all services that have been driven by banks looking to increase their online conversion rates.

I suspect more will be required to convert users of the mobile Internet, on an iPhone or otherwise.

Communicative Environments [The Garland Group - Home]

steven — Wed Jul 16 18:20:00 UTC 2008

Throughout my career, I have found that the single most frequent cause of a project or group???s failure occurs when the individual???s involved fail to communicate. While the seemingly obvious problem is easily visible, the transitions required to correct the situation are less pronounced and can be difficult to implement when one is not focusing on the process. The path toward correction of the communication problem has a dysfunctional, collaborative, and anticipatory phase. Discerning which phase a group is in can be simple once one understands the specific symptoms or attributes of the phases.

Groups that work in a dysfunctional phase will not find success or will be merely able to get by. The observable symptoms might include inconsistent understanding of the team???s objectives, lack of adequate planning, unstated or understated expectations, ineffective or inconsistent communications methods, and loss of employee motivation, morale, or even increased turnover. The phase will inspire some individuals to create informal communication channels, aka ???The Rumor Mill??? which will be useful for about 60-seconds and will quickly digress into something akin to a reality television show. While the group may clamber through the project and complete some beneficial work, it is likely that the results will be from a sub-group or individual who at the last minute pull the project out of its nose-dive. It is in this phase that I typically define the person in charge of the group as a supervisor or lead simply because anything more managerial would overstate their apparent abilities.

If the group has recurring success, then they probably have some practices in place that could be considered collaborative. Teams that have achieved this success have generally adopted the basic idea of project work must be defined and controlled. As with anything in business, there is a diminishing return on the use of this idea. Too much emphasis on definition and control will create bureaucracy. This phase is commonly defined through the use of a predetermined set of tools for communication and project tracking along with a clearly defined set of inputs, processes, and deliverables or expected results. In Human Resource circles, one might define this as a classical management model since the processes are definable and can be studied for improvements toward a ???perfect??? level of efficiency and effectiveness. However, the significant drawbacks found in this communicative phase are the dehumanization of the project work and the loss of opportunity for individuals to be creative or to excel. Teams that are working in this phase typically have individuals leading the group who are best titled mangers since they are focusing on the overall group???s progression toward the successful completion of the defined goal. These managers are competent team members who are comfortable with their team and who desire to be the team???s best member, either through their contributions or through management acumen.

The most effective phase for teamwork is found when the person in charge works to develop the communications channels to handle not only the collaborative data but to also inspire each team member to share the overall strategic goal. In this communicative environment, terms that are frequently misused by managers are used by leaders to arouse their subordinates??? desire to provide only their best work. Terms such as buy-in, ownership, empowerment, and open communications define a reality and sense of trust and fairness, which allows the team???s individuals to focus on the needs of the team rather than protecting their own posteriors. These working groups are emulated by the managers who are seeking control in a dysfunctional or collaborative environment because teams who achieve this environmental phase have standing records of accomplishment and innovation along with nearly unshakable success. The primary focus of the team is to communicate constantly and to involve everyone. The team???s individuals offer ideas, assistance, and opinions without being asked or assigned because they believe their contributions are valued, useful, and that they are important to the group???s overall success. Leaders of these groups have well-developed self-images and understand their weaknesses and will seek team members that excel in their areas of weakness.

As one experiences different operating practices first hand they can appreciate the dynamics of the communicative environment as a team moves from dysfunctional through collaborative and hopefully into anticipatory. By understanding how to see the proverbial elephant in your team???s living room, one can assess the steps necessary to improve their situation and/or that of the team as well. Success is a human concept that can only be found where individuals understand what is expected and are given a reasonable chance to achieve its joys. The key to not only repeating but also exceeding one???s current success will be found in the team???s ability to understand and trust, which will be directly attributable to the quality of their communicative environment.

BCU tackles security at the customer PC level [The Better Banking Blog]

Jen Storeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11194754082914047267noreply@blogger.com — Tue Jul 15 23:57:00 -0400 2008

Rather than rely on its customers to have security services on their personal computer, Northern NSW based Banana Coast Credit Union (BCU) has undertaken to provide PC security health checks with every login. A financial institution providing security at the customer PC level is something unique in the Australian market.

“While we have many layers of security, the weak link in the chain is usually the home or business computer. Often people don’t even have the basics such as firewalls or antivirus software installed on their computer,” Ray Battle, CEO of BCU told Online Banking Review.

To address the lack of security at the customer level BCU is providing quarantined online banking sessions via TrustDefender. The service is provided free of charge to all BCU members from July.

“We feel that providing this will lead to an increase in the use of Internet Banking by our members who will be able to enjoy the convenience of online banking with the peace of mind that they are doing the most they can to protect their money and their identify,” Battle states.

A security check is performed on the customer’s PC or mobile device during the click through period to the login page. This process identifies malicious software prior to entering internet banking login details. This ensures that login details, including security token and other ID protocols cannot be captured by any keystroke logging software present.

TrustDefender employs sophisticated Rootkit detection technology and a Kernel Forensics Engine that detects, isolates and then secures a remote, customers’ computer from Trojans, viruses and other malware during online transactions. The TrustDefender system is designed to integrate with existing security services such as tokens and SMS passwords.

Tackling online banking security with a solution the focuses on the customer experience is an interesting concept. The solution seamlessly performs the security health check with no changes to the customers’ operating system. From a customers’ perspective, they are not required to do anything. Any detected threats are disabled, in real time, for the duration of the session.

Real time feedback on the security health of their computer is provided to customers. Educating customers about the security risks present is seen as an essential element of providing a robust and effective customer experience.

How will push-security solutions impact internet banking fraud?

Sometimes, It Takes An Outsider [Banking Kismet]

Mon Jul 14 23:10:20 -0400 2008

37signals, the people of Ruby On Rails fame, has a post about how they built buzz.� What caught my attention was their old 37Better Project.� Through this site, they built mockups of popular web applications.� One of these was online banking.

I don’t know about you, but it seems that the only thing that has changed in online banking in the last ten years is newer features in cash management.� 37signals did a mockup that was “slap ya head” insightful.� Out of all the online banking vendors, how is it that no one picked up on these design features?� The biggest complaint I’ve heard is some features being too complicated to perform.� People just want a simple way to perform their most basic functions.

Admit it, with all this Web 2.0 hype, online banking is still entrenched in Web 1.0, with no end in sight.� 37signals’ design doesn’t even use all that “AJAX” stuff.� It’s just a clean design that tells you what you need to know and gives you quick access to what you need.� Hopefully the “experts” will start to think about what they actually hate about online banking and work to make the experience better.

Here are the links to 37signals’ 37BetterBank page and their My Account page.

Are You Relevant? [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (joe sullivan) — Mon Jul 14 16:11:00 -0400 2008

Last Friday I had the pleasure of speaking at the 14^th Annual Senior Management Summit sponsored by the Texas Bankers Association in Austin and that is the very question I posed to my audience.

I spoke on what I believe to be the single most important topic facing the financial services industry: Relevance. I must say that I am truly jazzed up by this topic and at the same time a bit concerned that more bankers nationwide don’t see it as important, or even believe that it will affect them. That is just plain scary.

This is not just about the banking industry. Any business that serves the public, directly or indirectly, must see that change is the only constant; that we cannot rely on the traditional play book of the past for solutions in a changing world and that now is definitely not the time to be fearful.

Richard Tedlow, in his article published in this summer’s Harvard Business Review entitled “Leaders in Denial” states that you may be riding the express train to oblivion if you are not asking yourself if you are on the right path. I could not agree more!

At Market Insights we are all about helping clients to remain relevant and to grow their businesses. We are constantly seeking creative, innovative businesses and leaders, including financial institutions that are doing great things. I would like to hear your thoughts on Relevance, what you are doing at your business to move ahead, and any other feedback or ideas you care to share.

CommSec first to move on iPhone apps [The Better Banking Blog]

Thu Jul 10 03:07:00 -0400 2008

The Commonwealth Bank has become the first Australian institution to launch a dedicated iPhone application ahead of tomorrow’s Australian release.

The banks’ online broking arm CommSec has designed an iPhone Edition, which it says enables customers to make the most of iPhone’s touch screen functionality when trading online.

Clients can log-in to the dedicated service at www.commsec.com/iphone from 6pm tonight.

Despite the prevalence of the iPhone in the US, American banks have been slow to build dedicated apps that make it easier for iPhone users to conduct online banking using their iPhone.

Jim Breune at Netbanker says Germany’s Postbank was the first institution in the world to list its online banking app in the Apple directory, but more institutions are now joining in.

With Apple preparing to launch its App Store at the same time as we get the iPhone in Australia (2am their time) the race is on for banks to build useful tools for iPhone users.

Wesabe users can already view a snapshot of their recent transactions at all of the institutions they bank with thanks to the app Wesabe launched in January.

Users can also enter the cash transactions they make while on the move to help with budgeting and keeping track of little expenses or what Wesabe calls the “Latte factor”.

I hope Australian institutions and financial start-ups embrace iPhone Apps, ultimately helping to add to the utility we’re all hoping our iPhones will deliver.

Love / Hate Revisited [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Brady Walen) — Tue Jul 08 11:21:00 -0400 2008

Over the last year, we’ve talked a lot about love, hate and indifference relative to how consumers feel about the companies with which they do business – and specifically how consumers feel about their financial institutions, and how that impacts brand loyalty.

With so many institutions trying to be “all things to all people”, the industry has become commoditized; and in many cases, it’s become difficult for consumers to easily tell the differences between one institution and the next. As a result, many consumers are motivated by price or convenience factors, and lack the kind of strong emotional connection with their financial institutions that we see with other companies outside the industry like an Apple, Starbucks or Whole Foods for example.

As many financial institutions continue to take the safe approach marketing to the mass-middle-ground - or the indifferent, opportunities present themselves for others who are willing to take steps to truly differentiate their institution from the competition. But this requires a clearly defined target market and taking steps that will align your institution with their needs, values and preferences – you want to make it easy for your target to choose you over the competition, to feel that connection with your institution, and love doing business with your institution as a result. On the flip side of this, and the reason why many institutions don’t take these steps, is that you have to be willing to allow other consumers - those that aren't part of your target, to make the choice not to do business with you. In most cases, this means thinking differently about your pool of prospective customers - focusing your efforts on those that will love what you're doing while allowing others to hate what you're doing.

During the past week, I’ve seen two examples in television campaigns of companies embracing this love / hate concept: Crocs (the ugly slip-on plastic-looking shoes…as you can tell, I’m on the hate side of the spectrum) and Scion (the Toyota spin-off for those looking to express their individuality through their cars).

First, during the AVP Pro Volleyball Tournament sponsored by Crocs, I was introduced to the company’s “love ‘em or hate ‘em” campaign. Crocs shoes are very popular in my neighborhood, as I’m sure they are across the country; but the company’s marketing team understands that there are plenty of people like me who don’t like the shoes – and, it's embracing and promoting the love / hate feelings with a new crocslovehate.com website. The site is working to build buzz around the fact that people either love or hate the shoes, and draw people from the indifferent middle-ground to one side or the other.

Second, I was intrigued by commercial with a similar concept for Scion. Once again, Scion understands that some people love its cars and others hate them – and this is by design. The commercial includes the obvious message “love it or loathe it” to drive home the point.

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

What does the love / hate concept look like with banks and credit unions? Sure, we’ve seen our share of hate websites, blog posts and other commentary about bad experiences with financial institutions, but we don’t hear the kind of rants and raves from both sides of the spectrum like we do with these and other examples outside of the industry.

While we hear executives and marketers talk about their ideal customers and target market, we never hear them talk about the customers or members they don't want - or those that they're willing to lose in an effort to build a stronger connection with their target segments. So, if you know of an institution making strategic choices with “love us or hate us” attitude, I’d like to hear about it.

Perspective [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Perry) — Mon Jul 07 08:58:00 -0400 2008

On Thursday afternoon, just about the time when many of us were wrapping up business to break away for a well-deserved holiday weekend, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman was posting a web exclusive story from the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado. In case you missed this article entitled “In Search of Optimism”, it recounted comments by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to PBS’s Charlie Rose:

"The economy is virtually unfathomable," he began. "I hope we have hit bottom, but I can't really say." On the upside, he said, we all need to maintain some historical perspective. In 1987, he reminded the crowd, the stock market had dropped 25 percent in one day. The current depressing run was months in the making. Nor is the situation like 1982, when we faced a recession driven by sky-high interest rates. By historical standards, unemployment is relatively low at 5.5 percent. But as a country we face rising economies elsewhere around the world—trading partners increasingly turned competitors—energy costs and above all a lack of political will to use government well.

These cautionary comments from a man who many call “America’s top banker”, should remind us about the importance of perspective in times of great uncertainty. While most community bankers and credit union executives don’t have the advantage of Mr. Dimon’s unique situation, they can certainly benefit from his point of view.

Too often, current events and market news prompt us to make hasty choices. But perspective and context can counteract fear and help guide choices that will shape the future of the financial services industry.

What's the deal, B of A ??? [The Garland Group - Home]

roz — Fri Jul 04 20:13:00 UTC 2008

I am not an expert in the field of banking by any stretch, but I am a consumer and customer of one of the biggest banks in America…who shall remain nameless :) and SOMETHINGS awry with their communication between customers and customer service. Let me tell you about my recent experience…

We recently went on a three-week trip to Norway and Finland. About 2 weeks prior to us leaving, I decided to be pro-active and call all my credit card companies and debit card company to let them know that we would be in northern European for a period of time and would be using our cards over there. Just letting them know so my card would be valid and transactions would go through when needed. You know, I was trying to do all the stuff the travel people tell you to do ahead of time, and had security in mind for my cards.

Called Discover….no problem… in a quick, friendly visit with a customer service rep, all was well and taken care of.

Called Mastercard…same thing…quick and easy, no problem; all set up and ready to go within 5 minutes.

Called my Visa debit card through B of A. My call got rerouted several times, ended up on hold for over 30 minutes TWICE, then routed to wrong department and my call was summarily dropped. Tried to go online and make a note that we would be out of the country and guess what? There were no options to even choose on the list they provided of possible automated messages. So, I left work, got in my car and drove a couple of miles down the road to my local branch. Was greeted at the door by a young guy who said he could help me. Went into a little room with him, explained my frustration with their phone system, and told him what I needed to do. He then got on the phone and called someone at B of A, got rerouted to the WRONG PERSON himself, and after he talked to 3 different people, and I sat and waited for almost 45 minutes. He SAID that it was taken care of. At that point, I didn’t know whether to believe him or not…so what did I do??? I decided to not take a chance of being able to use my debit card over there, and withdrew a large sum of money from my account to take with me instead. On the way back to the office, I then called the number on the back of my card, explained to the lady what should have just taken place and I was just checking to make sure there was a notation about my account being used in Europe between this date and that date. Well, that must have been too soon for his changes to take place within their system, because SHE DIDN’T SEE IT. Total frustration on my part, with this bank and debit card.

At this point, I asked myself…WHY was it so easy for Discover to do it quickly on the phone in a 5-minute call; and for MASTERCARD to do it in a 5 minute call, and B of A couldn’t do it in several hours and direct calls from my own bank??? WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SO HARD?

Here’s the end of my story… we got to Europe, and all my cards worked for me over there…even my B of A debit card, but I was nervous about it the whole trip. And when I got back…I decided….

I am changing banks.

Internet banking customer experience makes a difference [The Better Banking Blog]

Jen Storeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11194754082914047267noreply@blogger.com — Thu Jul 03 00:26:00 -0400 2008

Research by US based comScore has reinforced the significance of the customer experience for online banking. In an increasingly competitive market, many US banks are investing heavily into online and mobile banking services, with customer experience designed as the key differentiator.

The survey found that US customers are interested in using interactive communications channels with their bank. One quarter of respondents were interested in using chat. Widgets that displayed information such as account balances were of interest to 23 per cent of respondents.

However the chicken and egg phenomenon may apply. Whilst customers are indicating they are interested in these services, real world up take lags behind. This may be due to the scarcity of such services being provided by US banks or it may reflect customer aspirations rather than actual behaviour.

In Australia some banks are embracing interactive communications channels, as are some insurance providers. Western Australia based Police and Nurses Credit Society has been using online chat for around 4 years. Yet few other institutions have followed their lead.

Suncorp implemented click to talk technology for home loans last September. Lyndall Plumb, specialist in lending customer management at Suncorp told Online Banking Review, “There has been a great response to click to call. We believe it has the potential to be a great service for a wide range of customers.”

“With our soon to be released, new home loan application form click to call will be available throughout the entire process,” Plumb continues. “We hope that this encourages customers to contact us if they are unsure of anything so that we can help them to finish their online application.”

Widgets are an even rarer than interactive communication in online Australian financial services. Tony Kent, Managing Director of online financial services agency Spark Green told Online Banking Review, “Widgets or gadgets are a concise flexible tool designed to give quick answers on specific subjects. In principle they are ideal for finance companies to give small, easily digested nuggets of knowledge to web visitors. The benefit of helping people understand is ideal for finance.”

Kent continues, “To date Australian financial services organisations have not embraced widgets as a part of their online strategy. Consider the typical mortgage calculator from NAB. This calculator requires 3 screens and 9 input boxes to deliver results. Compare this to the precise and succinct mortgage calculator widget used by US based Mortgage Sum.”

Sharon Nelson, General Manager of Spark Green explains, “A well designed, valuable widget also provides a great opportunity to position to drive more traffic to your website and extend your brand. Positioning your widget on content network is akin to simple and elegant syndication of your content.”

“Australian financial companies should get on board the widget revolution to help customers help themselves, bring down call centre costs and help keep live calls focussed on adding value,” says Nelson.

With so few companies blazing the trail with these technologies, what are the hurdles to implementing such technologies into financial services organisations?

How will Starbucks closures impact shared-space bank branches? [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Brady Walen) — Wed Jul 02 17:39:00 -0400 2008

It seemed like a no-brainer for some institutions’ expansion strategies: build branches near or adjacent to a Starbucks store; or better yet, take full advantage of the foot traffic generated by the coffee chain and share a retail space. Given the rapid growth and much-discussed success of Starbucks in recent years, it certainly seemed like a viable strategy.

But as news comes today of Starbucks’ plans to close more than 600 stores over the next year, how will financial institutions sharing space with Starbucks stores be impacted?

While most of the planned Starbucks closures will be those stores opened since 2005, it doesn't sound like the institutions referenced in this Wall Street Journal article from 2005 will be impacted. But what about those institutions that may have followed their lead and teamed up with Starbucks with a shared-space since then? Or, what about those that were influenced in some respect by a Starbucks location when selecting a site for a new branch during the past few years? We've talked to quite a few institutions, especially those with branches near college campuses, who have aggressively pursued such partnerships with Starbucks.

It's easy to see how the shifts in traffic patterns can certainly benefit many businesses, especially those that follow retail magnets like Starbucks or Wal-Mart, but what happens when they close their doors? I suppose we’ll find out which institutions, if any, will be impacted when Starbucks makes its announcement to its employees later this month about which locations will be closed.

Harris Bank Touts Stability in its Musical Chairs Campaign [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Brady Walen) — Tue Jul 01 16:42:00 -0400 2008

I suppose it was only a matter of time before the musical greeting cards concept was adopted by marketers for a direct mail piece; we received one yesterday at the office from Harris Bank.

The mailer leads with the message: “business banking in Chicago has become a game of musical chairs”, and plays “pop goes the weasel” when opened. While the music was unexpected and grabbed my attention, I had to read the content a couple times before I fully understood the purpose of the mailer.

Inside, the piece talks about how “While the rest of the Chicago banking community plays musical chairs – old familiar names disappearing, bankers moving on- Harris remains rock solid. We have had the same name for more than 125 years. We’re here to stay.”

Granted, we did just see the major acquisition of LaSalle Bank in Chicago by Bank of America - which is certainly an example of an “old familiar name” disappearing, but is that enough to make customer think about switching institutions? Bank of America did an excellent job handling the transition for LaSalle Bank customers in the months leading up to the acquisition – sending personalized letters, providing answers to FAQ’s, setting expectations, and welcoming them as B of A customers. These efforts undoubtedly put many of LaSalle’s customers at ease about the acquisition – and it’s these kinds of efforts that we’re seeing the major national and regional players deploying during acquisitions in markets across the country.

And if having the same name for 125 years isn’t compelling enough to switch to Harris, the mailer also carries a $250 promotional offer for opening a new business account; but even then, I doubt it’s enough to move a significant number of accounts.

With a lot of uncertainties around the success rates of direct mail initiatives by financial institutions, I have to question how much Harris paid for each of these pieces – and what it expects as far as a return. And with the amount of money the campaign must have cost for production and postage, I’d like to think that the marketing team would have taken the time to ensure that the pieces were addressed to a specific person at our office - but the piece was simply addressed to “Market Insights”.

Over the last couple years, we’ve seen quite a few institutions promote stability and longevity in markets where acquisitions and mergers are happening – and in most cases, the expected customer run-off from the acquired institutions just doesn’t follow. I expect that the same will hold true in the Chicago market, especially with the well-managed transition of LaSalle Bank to Bank of America. The Harris piece just falls short.

Voice ATMs? [Banking Kismet]

Tue Jul 01 11:39:50 -0400 2008

It seems like the technology in ATMs has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 10 years.� Deposits without envelopes, stamp purchases, and keypad randomizers are just a few of the enhancements.� Now there is talk of using cell phones to perform cardless transactions.

The way this works is, a customer’s associate can enter a cell phone number into the ATM.� The ATM then calls the number.� Once the customer answers the phone, they then authorize the transaction and a voice match is done to authenticate the customer.

So now, I guess parents will be able to authorize those late night ATM withdrawals for their college kids.� Here’s the link to the patent.

And I thought ATMs were an expectation [Grow Your Bank]

noreply@blogger.com (Brady Walen) — Mon Jun 30 16:49:00 -0400 2008

So I went to the bank today and found that the ATMs had been upgraded - they now have check imaging capabilities. And while I’ve heard about the technology that allows checks to be deposited at an ATM without an envelope, I hadn’t yet used one until this afternoon. It’s a pretty slick process: tell the ATM that you want to make a deposit and insert the check directly into the machine. An image of the check appeared instantly on the screen; the computer displayed the deposit amount and asked me if it was correct – I was surprised that the computer read the hand-written amount on the check. After approval, you can select to have a receipt printed with or without the check image, or chose no receipt at all. All of this in a matter of a few quick prompts on the screen.

This was in sharp contrast to an experience we had last week with a community bank in a small town in North Carolina – where a teller told us that the bank was “old fashioned”. Old fashioned is an understatement. Here’s an institution with a large geographic footprint, promoting free checking at its branches, and it doesn’t offer an ATM or ATM card. And, after looking online after our visit, the bank doesn’t have a website either.

While I realize that today’s financial institutions don’t necessarily need to have the same products, services or delivery channels as their competitors, I had considered ATMs to be an expectation rather than an option – especially with institutions like mine upgrading machines that are already fully functional and feature more bells and whistles than most ATMs out there.

So, how long can an "old fashioned" bank continue to conduct business successfully (without ATMs, a website, or online banking) in an environment where consumer expectations are rapidly changing?

Remote Capture [The Garland Group - Home]

heath — Mon Jun 30 17:50:00 UTC 2008

I???ve officially seen the full spectrum of Remote Deposit Capture now. We???ve been to banks that will sell scanners and merchant capture solutions to mom and pop shops and give their dog a login account through cash management (Don???t worry he???s a guard dog, so he understands security). I???ve also talked to CEO???s who just won???t allow their customers to do their encoding for them, so they won???t even consider a merchant capture product. Maybe he should get a more reliable customer base.

Now, I???m going to surprise you here because I (the security minded consultant) lean towards the first banker who will sell merchant capture to anyone. Why? Because out of all the banks that we have been to and all the different products we???ve seen used, we???ve seen absolutely ZERO losses. Kudos to the vendors rolling out a really great product integrated with Check 21 and the bank???s first right to those imaged checks. Yeah, we???ve seen some duplicated checks and numerous headaches for operations staff, but these are definitely worth it for getting some more hooks into those commercial customers.

You can also further reduce your exposure by placing deposit limits on these accounts, just like you do with ACH limits. There are also some good reports off merchant capture products and will even tell you which checks were scanned twice. So, for you bankers that are on the fence about merchant capture, hop off into the 21st century and give your customers what they really want with very low risk potential. Go ahead and sell it to your ???iffy??? customers too, just put some additional controls around them.

Online innovations in car insurance [The Better Banking Blog]

Jen Storeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11194754082914047267noreply@blogger.com — Sat Jun 28 02:24:00 -0400 2008

The personal insurance market in the UK changed dramatically with the advent of aggregators. Rather than the disenfranchising the intermediary channel, which was one of the core dot com strategies, the online aggregators created a price war amongst UK car insurance providers.

One of the largest aggregators in the UK, The Car Insurance Megastore, provides online only comparisons and quotes for more than 317 insurance companies and their car insurance policies. Since its inception 6 years ago, The Car Insurance Megastore has focused on providing an easy-to-use online customer experience.

Online innovations have been crucial to the success of the company in a fiercely competitive market. Firstly, all customer applications are monitored in real-time. This allows any errors in an application to be identified and rectified prior to submission to the insurance underwriter. This unique approach ensures customers are provided accurate quotes and accurate applications.

Click to call support services have also been implemented to help customers obtain a quote and apply for their policies online. This has increased quote and application completion rates and greatly increased customer satisfaction. In the past 12 months, only two complaints have been made by customers.

The Car Insurance Megastore was the first insurance company to offer flexible online payment options. Customers can modify payment options online via a secure administration service. Policies can also be purchased via Google Checkout, in another move to encourage more customers to safely complete online insurance transactions.

Text messaging is the latest innovation implemented by The Car Insurance Megastore. SMS messages are automatically generated when various conditions arrive within a customer’s quotation or policy lifecycle. The opt-in service allows customers to receive messages when their application has been approved, is up for renewal or when a payment is required. The company also sends a copy of generated quotes and marketing messages via SMS.

In-house research by the company revealed that customers preferred to be kept up to date about their insurance via SMS. Customers were much more likely to respond to an SMS request than an email or telephone call.

The return on investment has also been significant for The Car Insurance Megastore with not only the response rate to outbound SMS requests being significantly greater than other channels but with the cost significantly less than calling landlines or mobile handsets.

Locally, insurance aggregators have not had the success of their UK counterparts. However, local insurance providers are beginning to explore online payment options. Some have begun to use click to talk and SMS to support customers through the online application process. GIO provides click to talk services if a quote cannot be provided online. AAMI has taken a different approach by providing click to talk customer support at any level of interaction on the website.

Angela La Sala, Process and Applications Manager at Suncorp, owners of AAMI, told Online Banking Review, “The response (to click to talk) from our online customers has been extremely positive. Customers are surprise by the ease of use and how immediate the service is. It has boosted customer confidence in the AAMI website to know that there is staff behind the site supporting customers.”

“Click to talk has allowed us to have continual and immediate feedback from our customers, rather than rely on sporadic ad hoc research before making changes to improve the AAMI website,” La Sala explains.

“It provides exceptional customer service and allows customers to contact us immediately whilst online, as opposed to waiting on a call centre phone queue or response email. Customers online expect immediate service, click to talk allows us to deliver this level of service.”

AAMI embraced SMS as a customer communication technology in 2007. SMS reminders are issued for renewal and new business notices that are due.

How long will it take for online, two-way communication channels between insurance companies and customers to become a standard customer service offering in Australia?

Be dedicated to your customers! [The Garland Group - Home]

lisa — Fri Jun 27 17:04:00 UTC 2008

With banking technology advancing almost by the minute, you’ve probably been fighting to keep up with all these changes. You can set up things like mobile banking, create a company blog, provide remote check deposit services all you want. However, no matter how much ground-breaking technology you provide your customers, the main thing that will keep them loyal to you is your FI’s dedication to customer service.

I think back to when I started college. I switched all my accounts from my hometown community bank to the larger bank nearby my university (roughly 90 miles from home). Over the years I’ve observed that my new bank doesn’t necessarily have the best rates or customer rewards programs (I’d have to spend over $2600 to get a $5 gift card from some generic restaurant chain).

However, I’ve only had maybe a couple of problems throughout the years with this bank, which were quickly and easily taken care of. Every time I have a question, there’s a number I can call where I’m quickly connected to a real person and am given answers in just a few minutes. When I go to the bank, I’m treated very, very well.

What’s keeping me with this bank is their dedication to customer service. They may not have all these cool account features or even highly competitive rates, but I’m completely satisfied with my experience with them over the past 5 years.

My point is this: you can give your customers all the features they could ever want, but you’ve got to back it up with outstanding customer service. Inevitably, customer satisfaction is what makes or breaks you, not keeping up with every new piece of technology.