Tagging is very useful, and there will be lessons from tagging that we can use in bank sites, and online banking.  This post at Bokardo outlines well the current state of tagging, which many think is stuck.  Tagging is continually held up as social computing, yet the primary value is personal. Bokardo » The Del.icio.us Lesson The one major idea behind the Del.icio.us Lesson is that personal value precedes network value. What this means is that if we are to build networks of value, then each person on the network needs to find value for themselves before they can contribute … Continue reading The value of tagging, and why we should care

Go to Capgemini.com to register, and download this report.  Dramatic increase in online sales, and the role of branches changing as dramatically.  The report conclusion says it all. Thought Leadership: World Retail Banking Report 2006 | Capgemini Featuring the most current Retail Banking pricing trends spanning Europe, North America and Asia Pacific with data collected from 20 countries and 41 executive  interviews, the 3rd annual World Retail Banking Report provides in-depth pricing analyses and takes a fresh look at Retail Banking channels and the impact those channels are having on today’s distribution models.   Produced by Capgemini, EFMA and ING. Report … Continue reading World Retail Banking Report 2006

This article co-incides nicely with my own observation, while wandering around Manhattan this week.  The article is contradictory – it says:

1. the best customers are using electronic channels less and less
2. the “worst” customers are using branches

The article goes on to state that banks are building boutique branches, with comfortable seats, LCD tv’s etc.  I saw those and they are still empty.

Relevance to Bankwatch:
More on the role of branches, and the link to strategy to come, in future posts.

TheStar.com – Big bang in retail banking

Banks have a problem. More and more, their most profitable customers are not coming into their branches. As a result, banks are looking to pilfer concepts from the world’s most powerful retail stores. Plasma TVs, plants and comfy chairs are popping up in branches.

Continue reading “is it Too little too late for branches?”

This is a highly useful and relevant alert service, allowing customers to keep track of changes to the fraud sensitive bill registration area. Barclays extra fraud protection | This is Money They will also offer customers a free service which will send them a text message every time a new payment is set up from their account. ‘If a recipient is not on our recognised list of financial providers, credit card companies and the like, we will send the customer a text message to tell them a new payment has been set up,’ a spokesman told This is Money. Technorati … Continue reading Barclays provide smart alert service

This is a seismic shift in consumer attitudes against In-store diversification in grocery stores.  It could be that in 2002, consumers saw it as newer, but are not getting tired of it.  51% of consumers want supermarkets to focus on food Although the percentage of respondents buying or using none of the suggested products or services was significantly lower in 2006 than in 2002, the percentage of those who held the opinion that supermarkets should concentrate on their food offering had dramatically increased over the same period (51.3% of respondents in 2006, compared with 24% in 2002). Continue reading The future for Instore services is not clear

Viewpointe is the largest image archive in the US. Finextra: Harris Bank selects CSC and Viewpointe for electronic imaging (2004) Harris Bank selects CSC and Viewpointe for electronic imaging Harris Bank, part of the BMO Financial Group, has signed a multi-year agreement to utilise Viewpointe and CSC electronic imaging systems. In more recent news, Viewpointe have contracted with IBM has signed a five-year, $174 million deal with IBM for the development of a new national cheque image archive. All the big banks in the US are users. The deal calls for IBM – which is also a minority owner in … Continue reading Harris Bank selects CSC and Viewpointe for electronic imaging

Found this old speech from the 2001 Forrester Forum.  Interesting to contrast, and see how far the industry has come, yet still the big banks have a long way to go.

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Fannie Mae

Let me thank Forrester Research for helping investors to understand the New Economy and the fact that a company can be a winner even if it happens to make money.

I appreciate the opportunity to show how a Fortune 50 financial services company like Fannie Mae can harness the technology of the New Economy to be a leader in what we call the Permanent Economy. In fact, let me report today that Internet Week magazine has just named Fannie Mae their “E-Business of the Year in Financial Services.” As the magazine said, “Fannie Mae has almost overnight become one of the nation’s premier e-businesses.”  If you’re wondering how a 63-year-old company in the secondary mortgage market became an E-Business success, we did it by embracing two key trends.

First we fully embraced what Forrester calls “open finance.” As Forrester has pointed out, the trend in financial services is that large-scale, strongly branded firms will collect and offer their consumers the best financial products available anywhere in the market — the best credit card, the best insurance, the best mutual fund, the best mortgage. Not just the in-house brand, but the best product available. And the winners in this trend will be financial companies that specialize either in making the products, or distributing them. They won’t try to do it all.

Continue reading “Remarks delivered by Franklin D. Raines, Chairman and CEO, Fannie Mae, June 12, 2001”

Jon Kaplan, Head of Financial Services at Google spoke about leveraging Google for marketing purposes.  Some key points from his talk: Online /offline doesn’t matter to them – its all marketing and how it ties together across channels several examples, all Japanese, provide clues to the future bill boards, with QR code, that can be read by a phone, to receive offers location advertising to your cell phone, based on where you are physically, what merchants are in the same place, and presented on your cell phone Google trends to help sort out the clutter frequency of search terms, and … Continue reading Google and financial services

Harley Manning from Forrester, spoke eloquently at the Financial Forum keynote this morning.  He has developed a measurement for brand image, and brand action on your web site.  He made the case that people get confused when there is no framework for making a decision, and this particularly applies to web sites.  He advocated the use of persona’s to centre decision makers from disparate groups on assessment and design questions.  Such groups, would be Marketing, Product & Channel. Using the 14 sets of criteria, he made the point that the linkage between that which companies say their brand represents, and … Continue reading Brand action and brand image are critical considerations for your website

Yahoo spoke for an hour, and I think surprised many people.  Topics covered; the value of social search – example, yahoo answers – 10 million answers in 5 months how customers rely on friends and family as part of the purchasing process examples of financial services opening up their brands to social computing Visa – Lifetakes HSBC – pointofview.com I would also add to that, Wells Fargo – In History They spoke of the engagement metric, and the relevance of the portfolio of considerations, used to understand how customers get to their decision the value of product comparison – Progressive … Continue reading Yahoo provides perspective on financial services online