I echo Jeans point here, based on experience that I have watched with Banks misguided attempts in this approach.  It usually stems from some internal research that proves the usual stuff about 80% of profits emanating from 20% of customers.  In fact its often more like 95/5. Recently UnionBanCal announced that they were moving away from pursuing a broad consumer base in order to go after more high-end, profitable clients and small businesses (American Banker, January 9, 2007). However, I have my doubts that shrinking the retail base will actually help UnionBanCal grow its deposits. Source: Javelin Strategy and Research … Continue reading Focusing on high-end consumers may not always pay | Javelin

For those bloggers, or readers performing research this tool that I only came across today, is quite remarkable, and could have saved me time in past research. Waybackmachine holds archived copies of web pages back to the 90’s.  I was amazed (and embarrassed … at the quality) to find stuff I worked on from 96. Its also useful to find earlier editions of pages that have been since edited.   Technorati tags: web+archive, waybackmachine, www Continue reading Waybackmachine: great research tool

email and its role hit me twice in the last few minutes, so thought I would update the things I have seen lately.  William over at VanCity asked about the role of email. I don’t pretend to know it all, but the reading and examples I have seen, point to email as a relationship tool. Pertinent communication that is useful to the receiver. Anything marketing related at all should still meet those criteria, but always with the opt in/out preferences in the hands of the customer. I’ll do up a post with the links I have seen on this, including … Continue reading Update; the role of email for Banks

News from Natwest, and Lloyds with introduction of Polish Banking.  This is in keeping with the earlier pieces we had on addressing immigrants’ needs and seeing that as an opportunity for market protection.  I don’t see this so much as innovation, because anyone can do that.  However failure to implement such services, will doubtless result in reduced market share over time, as the population becomes more mixed. Natwest says its new Welcome Account comes with a related money transfer feature that enables Polish customers in the UK to send money back home. Customers can transfer funds straight from the current account into the … Continue reading Finextra: Natwest launches Polish account in the UK

Someone at BMO just pointed out their new implementation of RSS autodiscover. So what you may ask! Well that means when you browse to personal and business pages of the bmo site with Firefox or IE7/ Vista you will see the orange RSS symbol appear in the address bar, and clicking it will show the RSS feeds, and podcasts available. UPDATE: I have been most remiss, and apoligise to both North Shore Credit Union, and VanCity, both of whom had RSS autodiscover implemented. While my topic was Banks, I also use CU’s as positive examples and missed this opportunity. Thanks … Continue reading BMO – first bank (but not Credit Union) with RSS auto-discover

 This latest note from PEW notes the increasing ubiquity of social networks amongst American teenagers. More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project Source: Pew Internet: Social Networking and Teens   Technorati tags: social+networks Continue reading 55% of online Americans, aged 12-17 use social networking sites

California State University (CSU) has been studying how Freshmen use internet, with a view to implementing a technology literacy test.  This is interesting in terms of how people find things, and probably goes some way to explain why spam and phishing continue to succeed.  The difference between intelligent browsing, and anything else is summarised by this quote. “It actually makes you think about how you do research,” Juarez said. “I would just assume if it was the first thing that popped up, it was up to date.” Source: Technology News: Trends: Generation M’s Surprising Struggle With Tech Literacy This research is … Continue reading Generation M’s Surprising Struggle With Tech Literacy

In keeping with the end of year theme, thought I would share some stats, as I consider readers interests, and think about how I can improve Bankwatch in 2007. Note my stats are from WordPress, and they only do that past 30 days, so I should do this more frequently now that I think about it.  In any event here it is. Some notes on themes I see follow the list. 2006-11-24 to Today TitleViews How to web 2.0 your bank277 Bankwatch predictions – Banking 2007221 Online only Banks (branchless Banks)199 Final post – detail on a failed attempt 194 The Captcha … Continue reading 2006 end of year review – most popular posts