More on WaMu, specifically Chicago.  They expanded in Chicago only 3 years ago. Washington Mutual Inc., which moved aggressively into the Chicago market in recent years, is now closing branches in the area. The Seattle-based bank plans to close 28 of its 172 Chicago-area branches, mainly in Lake and McHenry Counties as well as in other outlying suburbs. An estimated 168 jobs could be affected by the closures. WaMu’s deposit market share in the Chicago area is 0.3 percent, the same as Rockford-based Amcore Bank, which has only about two dozen Chicago-area branches, and Elgin-based EFS Bank, which has about … Continue reading Washington Mutual steps back | Chicago Tribune

 Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) lead the pack but amongst banks, TD & BMO are catching up. This from Interbrand’s list of Canada’s top 25 brands. RBC is at an advantage, Mr. Torrance said, because the bank has been using the same brand positioning for decades. Its position as the most blue-suited of the banks also helps because it can be applied to both retail and corporate banking, he said. Jeff Swystun, global director for Interbrand, says Canada’s top three banking brands — RBC, TD (No. 2 on the list of Canada’s top brands) and Bank of Montreal (No. 7) — … Continue reading Canadian Banks get smarter about branding

 Windsor Motor city Credit Union tries out MySpace to connect to its younger consumers. Windsor’s Motor City Community Credit Union is among the Canadian organizations with a profile on MySpace. Mike Quinlan, the marketing director of the credit union, said he was aware of the dangers, but the experience has been more successful than he hoped. “It came about because of listening to my eldest daughter, who was 24. The profile site is intended to give young people a forum to learn about and discuss financial issues, he said. “It’s a great channel, it’s very cost-efficient. “It’s too early to … Continue reading TheStar.com – Marketers muse about MySpace

 In this US study from the American Bankers Association generational differences start to display clues about the future. Online banking is the clear winner, and this flies in the face of the current push to build branches. When consumers were asked what banking method they use most often, branches topped the poll with 32% of the vote, followed by online and ATM channels, each with 26%, and telephone and postal methods bringing up the rear at five per cent apiece. However, generational differences had a strong influence on how respondents answered. For example, banking at a local branch was the … Continue reading Finextra: Generation gap widens in banking channel mix

 I find this report interesting, even though a bit dated, from Nov 2005.  The trend will only have increased since then, so its relevant. This means that the use of search engines is edging up on email as a primary Internet activity on any given day. The Pew Internet Project data show that on a typical day, email use is still the top Internet activity. On any given day, about 52% of American Internet users are sending and receiving email, up from 45% in June of 2004. Source: Pew Internet: Search engine use Thinking about the next generation of banking … Continue reading Pew Internet: Search engine use up significantly

 Speculation mounts on what Bank of America might do next. “You could probably go pick two dozen large international banking operations that they could go after, and the list may be too long to note. They could also be “transformational” in other domestic financial operations outside of banking, but the street is into more of a de-conglomerization attitude these days so that may not be in the works. They have just recently integrated the large acquisition of MBNA for credit cards, so we’ll have to see what are the next obvious candidates. Bank of America has gotten more into mortgage … Continue reading "24/7 Wall St.: Weekend Edition: Who Will Bank of America Acquire Next? And Where?"

Over at The Marketers Consortium, Elana Anderson of Forrester Research, is guest host.  In this post she asks if Customer Centricity is a realistic goal.  This is something I looked at here, and co-incidentally (honest) I referred to a Forrester article in that one. This was my comment, and I wanted to elaborate after on this. Customer centricity is an essential goal. Anything less is going to be product focussed, or single channel focussed. These will fail because the media savvy customer is protecting themselves from the results of such activities. We have to consider the media savvy consumer of the … Continue reading Customer centricity is an essential goal – some attributes for marketing technology