Category: Innovation

Innovation, Payments

WAMU challenges traditional bank charges

Colin Henderson

In a brilliant move WAMU eliminates outbound service charges on wires.  This makes eminent sense, since it will encourage people to build up balances in anticipation of sending the money to foreign locations.  This is supported by the free cheques, and free ATM withdrawals. The costs of money transfer to the Bank are becoming less and less. The important aspect is building the relationship and the balances. Washington Mutual Promotes Free Outgoing Wire Transfers to LA’s Latino Community at Fiesta Broadway Washington Mutual is making the process of wiring money more affordable by introducing  the new WaMu Free Checking(TM) account, … Continue reading WAMU challenges traditional bank charges

Innovation, Payments1 Comment

BofA ponders card to rival giants

Colin Henderson

Expect more banks to challenge the big networks, as transaction volumes proliferate, and profits simply go to the networks for the new volumes. Charlotte Business Journal: BofA ponders card to rival giants – 2006-04-17 With credit cards increasingly important at Bank of America Corp., the bank is considering the bold step of starting its own payments network to compete with MasterCard and Visa. Morgan Stanley analyst Betsy Graseck, who recently met with senior BofA officials, paraphrased Chief Executive Ken Lewis in a report as saying such a move would be considered.…Graseck estimates BofA could boost its earnings by $70 million … Continue reading BofA ponders card to rival giants

Innovation1 Comment

Reasons to blog

Colin Henderson

Slightly off topic for me, but this post from Andrew McAfee defines precisely why I choose to blog, and it may be of interest to other professionals, in any sphere. There is just so much information to assimilate, supplemented by rapidity of change, that tools are required to maintain information currency and be able to innovate.

Andrew McAfee

It’s very reasonable to believe that most busy professionals are only going to blog if it helps them get their job done. But it’s also pretty reasonable to conclude that blogging will do exactly that.

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Innovation, Open Source Banking

Yodlee to debut personal finance service this summer

Colin Henderson

Wells Fargo recently dropped their OneLook service, and its interesting (speculation on my part) that Yodlee have been busy with announcements recently, and whether Wells are doing something with them.

Anyhow, Yodlee are busy, first was the account opening, including funding announcement, and now the personal finance centre.

San Francisco Business Times: Yodlee to debut personal finance service this summer – 2006-04-13

Yodlee, the Redwood City firm originally founded as an online account aggregation service, will debut its Money Center personal finance service this summer. The service will be offered through major banks. It's expected to be a free service, at least initially, to bank customers since most financial institutions see better customer retention and lower costs of servicing online banking customers.

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Innovation

Chevy shares statistics about the Tahoe campaign

Colin Henderson

Courtesy of the “church“, Chevrolet announce remarkably positive results from the Tahoe campaign.  Earlier predictions of doom and despair for this ‘campaign‘ prove to be incorrect.  In fact the positive  outcomes, with 400K visitors may prove the value in pinko marketing (wiki) that the wisdom of crowds will outfox the otherwise inadvertant tactics of companies.  Those 400K probably comprise a core group of Tahoe interested people. Church of the Customer Blog: Chevy shares statistics about the Tahoe campaign # About 84% have been straight product-pieces favorable to the Tahoe # Of the remaining 16% of submissions, the majority are either … Continue reading Chevy shares statistics about the Tahoe campaign

Innovation3 Comments

Yodlee online account opening reduces Banks reliance on switching costs for retention

Colin Henderson

This new service from Yodlee takes their aggregation based product suite to a new and sophisticated level that aggressive banks will leap on, particularly Yodlee banks.

Yodlee Launches New Online AccountOpening Product: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

Yodlee AccountOpening enables financial institutions to use their website, self-service branch kiosk and other channels to open new accounts and fund them immediately through an automated process that links credit databases, normalizes data and creates a dashboard in real-time so institutions can immediately assess risk for any consumer opening an account.

Relevance to Bankwatch:
One of the characteristics of internet that Banks have expected has been the promise of ease of switching between Banks'. This new service from Yodlee is ground breaking in fulfilling that promise. This greatly reduces Banks' reliance on switching costs for retention. Banks ability to compete is increasingly on providing a better offer, or customers will leave.

Full release for background:

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Innovation

DoCoMo’s cellphone credit card

Colin Henderson

The telco's worry me more than anything in terms of competition in the payments space. They have the prime advantage of having a gizmo in the hands of every waking adult in the world, that has communication and computer smarts built in. This is a heady combination.

Digital World Tokyo – Gadgets, Gear and Good Things from Japan…

…. a verification-free credit payment option to the mix for small amounts. The twin advantages of speed and simplicity could well push cellphone credit payments past the tipping point and into the big time.
….
The iD system is to be for touch-and-go payments what Visa and MasterCard are for plastic cards. Some Japanese credit card companies have already started offering iD-compatible cards to customers. 050406_Docomo_dcmx.jpg

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Innovation

Barclays introduces online account opening

Colin Henderson

This is a significant move for Barclays. Online account opening, will be one of the next big things for Banks.

Finextra: Barclays introduces online account opening

The UK's Barclays Bank has added a paperless online application facility to its Internet banking service for customers wishing to sign up to its current account. Barclays says a typical application takes around ten minutes and the whole process is carried out online so customers don't have to send valuable documents through the post.Customers can also apply online for an overdraft as part of their application. Julian Brewer, head of online marketing at Barclays, says the online current account service also has fewer questions for customers to answer.

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Business Models, Innovation, Web/Tech

How IT Drives Product Proliferation: Keeping Complexity at Bay

Colin Henderson

A new report from George Group/ Wharton is summarised at FinanceTech, by By Matt Reilly & Stephen Wilson, of George Group Consulting.

How IT Drives Product Proliferation: Keeping Complexity at Bay

Competitive pressures are driving the need for more product development. But the industry is plagued by complexity-related issues. Why IT may be part of the problem and why the solution may be less versus more

The key driver all Banks contend with are noted.

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