In North America, a security guarantee is table stakes for banks now. Its clear that consumers never lose their concern about online security. Customers become accustomed to the risk, and while those with greater online tenure can better live with the risk, the concern remains.

So a point of negative differentiation potentially exists for those banks that do not provide the security guarantee. This would be caused by the move from all the larger institutions to provide, it, so for those that do not, we can expect them to be questioned by their customers.

However, before we jump to conclusions, what exactly is the world state of security guarantees amongst banks.

Here is a list of selected banks in US, Canada, and Europe, with and without guarantees.

US:

US Banks that have a guarantee:

• Bank of America
• Wells Fargo
• Chase
• Wachovia
• Citi
• etrade

US Banks with no guarantee:

• note: all the big US banks have a guarantee per above

Canada:

Canadian Banks that have a guarantee:

• RBC
• TD
• National Bank
• North Shore Credit Union

Canadian Banks with no guarantee

• CIBC
• BMO
• Scotiabank

Europe:

European Banks that have a guarantee:

• Barclays
• HBOS
• Alliance & Leicester
• Banco Santander

European Banks with no guarantee:

• Lloyds
• Tesco
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• eBankinter
• Grupo Banco Popular
• Solbank
• Credit Lyonaisse
• BNP Paribas

Relevance to Bankwatch:

In North America, a security guarantee is table stakes. All the top banks have one, in Canada, and US. In Europe the situation is more different. The UK banks are leading this effort and the big banks are well covered, so a guarantee is table stakes there now. However, I could find no examples of a guarantee in mainland Europe.