Is today’s traditional retail banking market (“brick & mortar” banks) such that a purely web based bank (no offices whatsoever) is going to come out of nowhere and eat the lunch of traditional banks? If there is any industry that would appear to be ripe for these forms of delivery it would appear to be any kind of financial services. Financial services transact business with no physical inventory, just financial information.
The examples of anything close to an internet only bank sprang from the internet boom around the turn of the millennium. However, most (if not all) of these institutions have either been purchased by another institution (Security First Network Bank by Royal Bank of Canada) or have failed (NetBank). Today it is difficult enough to start a bank without the complexity of starting it over the internet. A lot of these early versions of internet only banks had to pay above market rates to attract deposits because no one knew who or where the bank was and if it was going to be around. One thing was working for them. Their fixed costs and human capital costs were low so they could afford to pay a little more to attract the funds. However, once they started to drop the rates there was no loyalty to institution and the funds left. Building (and keeping) a lasting relationship with a customer is the key to establishing a long lasting entity.
In the marketplace today we are starting to see some services that are beginning to nibble at what we would consider to be the business of your typical retail bank. For instance, on the liability side you have companies like PayPal (purchased by eBay) which allow businesses and individuals to transfer funds between each other securely. On a larger scale this could replace DDAs and take the bank out of the equation as the middleman in the transaction. Next, on the asset side we have new services, I’m not really sure you can call them businesses yet, (Virgin Money, Facebook’s Lending Club, Prosper and Zopa) that allow individuals to go out into the market and request funds for a loan. This matches lenders and borrowers (P2P). When you get right down to it this isn’t any different than loan participations, only on a smaller scale. Banks have used this method to spread their risk on larger, commercial loans for a long time. Because these loans are participated in small amounts (as little as $50) and the amount of time it takes to accumulate the funds can take a while, these types of loans are guaranteed to be small ($25,000 or less) and for short durations (less than 5 years). The trust also needs to be built over the web with lenders and borrowers usually never meeting each other. The lenders are also relying on a credit rating for the borrower gathered by the website service. In a lot of these cases the borrowers requesting the loans do not have anywhere else to turn due to their credit quality. This adds another barrier to entry and acceptability because the general consumer will see this in a negative light by only attracting people that can’t get a loan in the traditional manner (i.e. through a bank). In its current state these services are bound to remain a novelty until they can gain a wider more respectable market. However small, these examples are steps in the right direction to pure internet only banking.
These are the types of delivery methods in the Web 2.0 environment that the existing “community” bank and credit unions should be looking to exploit for their own business. Until there is an online source that can both accumulate the funds and then fund the loan requests in a rapid and expedient manner. There will be no economies of scale to take full advantage of the online banking marketplace. An existing organization that has been established for any period of time would seem to have a leg up on any new bank, whether internet only or brick and mortar. Mainly, because they have a historic track record and have built a level of trust with their customers. It can be extremely difficult to build a financial services company purely over the internet. The most successful banks need to service their customers in the manner in which the customer is comfortable.
However, all banks/credit unions need to start thinking about which methods make the most sense for them. Banks are anxious to get on board and not miss the boat, but they are also anxious about security (64 percent of InformationWeek Research respondents cite security as an issue to entry). Organizations are also concerned about losing control of their brand in regards to blogging, etc. But to this TD Bank’s Su McVey, VP for customer segments and strategy says, “You are going to be talked about anyways, so you may as well have some control over what is being said.” (Bank Systems & Technology, “Banks are Creating a New Kind of Customer Intimacy With Web 2.0 and Social Networking”, Nov. 1, 2007).
We can look at some banking technological developments from the recent past as a way to see how the industry adapts and applies it to the business. I’m talking about ATM’s and Internet Banking. Both of which were originally designed to lower the delivery costs of the supplier (banks) but also were sold to customer to improve customer service. Because when you get right down to it a successful banking business comes down to two things: customer service and dependability/reputation (a.k.a., trust).
ATM’s have been a success almost from the day they were introduced. At first the ATM service was given away mainly to keep the customer out of the lobby where a teller transaction is much more expensive. An ATM transaction cost a bank about 25c whereas the typical teller transaction is in dollars. Today banks charge for ATM transactions if you are not a customer of their bank. In a lot of cases the customer is also levied a fee by their bank if they use another bank’s (foreign) ATM. But customers are willing to pay for the convenience (get cash any time and virtually anywhere). Today, almost no one 40 or younger would consider going into a branch just to get cash. Once the service is ingrained in the marketplace banking has looked at ways of extracting fee income from it and this is a prime example.
I surmise that Internet Banking has been slower to take off due to “ease of use” issues (it requires a computer and sometimes navigating bank websites can be frustrating and time consuming) and concern over online security. In recent years there have some high profile examples of identity theft and each one of these is a step backward for Internet Banking. Also, the current format of Internet Banking also requires the customer to be active and pursue the transactions they want to search for. One reason banks want Internet Banking to succeed, besides the low cost of delivery, is the “stickiness” quotient. Once a customer gets all of their transactions setup and tied in, direct deposits coming in and auto bill pay going out, they are less likely to go to another bank and more likely to use additional products and services from their bank.
In my opinion banks need to start down a path of experimenting with products and services for Gen Y [1977-1998] and to start to think about Gen M (Millennials 1999-current) generation. Now is the best time because of where they are in their life cycle they are just starting to need the services of banks. At this point both groups (bankers and their younger customers) are at the same point but with complimentary needs. The banks can start as simply as blogging and reaching out through the new delivery methods to educate their potential customers about banking products and services. They can listen to their customers and develop products for the way they want to bank. Not guessing and giving them what they think they need and they can respond much quicker than they have in the past. What says a demand deposit account (DDA) today has to have physical checks? As Catherine Graeber, VP and principal analyst for Forrester Research says, “You don’t have to convince them (Gen Y) to give up checks’… because they have never used them.” (Nancy Fieg, Bank Systems & Technology, “RDS Special: The Next Generation of Online Banking”, Nov. 18, 2007) . As you can see banks can start to develop products and services that again are cheaper to deliver. Everything with the customer’s account can be electronic and delivered to them when they want and with no physical media (i.e. mailed statements). Again, this is an example of giving the customer the service they want. The barrier to entry down a Web 2.0 delivery is very low and can be very difficult to quantify anyways. But as Steve Ellis, EVP of Wells Fargo wholesale solution group says, “I can’t go out and cook up a dollar value for each collaboration app, I can just tell my boss I know we’ll be better off” for it. (“Wells Fargo Taps Web 2.0”, FinanceTech, Apr. 28, 2007) . Wells Fargo has started down the education road by creating Stagecoach Island inside SecondLife to reach out to this generation. Also, the longer an individual has been using a service the less likely they will be to give it up and this is one way of introducing them to their bank. Today Gen Y make up 15 percent of online households and that number is going to increase to 29 percent by 2011 (Nancy Fieg, Bank Systems & Technology, Nov. 18, 2007) . Not to mention there are 91 million members of Gen Y compared to 88 million Gen Xers and 77 million baby boomers. So, the planning for this number of consumers needs to start to be addressed. Obviously, as time goes by after new delivery methods have been developed and embraced by the market the older products (physical checks) should start to disappear. (When was the last time you heard of a Christmas Club?) Additionally, this means the influence of other generations (and the products they require (checks, etc.)) should decrease. If a customer can make deposits, open a CD, pay bills, as well as apply for a loan online why would they even consider going into a branch, Safe Deposit? At this point, a combination of existing and new, Web 2.0, delivery methods appears to be in order. Some sort of transition will probably need to take place
Today one of the few reasons a customer would need to go to a branch is to deposit a physical check. But even that is starting to go by the wayside. Customer online check scanning is being offered by some banks. Currently it is mostly to their commercial customers (Cardinal Bank (DC area), Columbia Bank (MD), 1st National Bank of AZ, Commerce Bank (MO), M&T Bank, Associated Bank (WI), and First Bank & Trust (LA) to name a few) but some are even offering the service to individuals (United Bank (WI) and USAA). This is another example of a service taken out of the branch.
After both the institution and the customer have had a chance to build a relationship through education. The next step is to make the banking website more inviting for this generation (and everyone else for that matter). Why not have a fully customizable customer homepage built with mashup technology? Where, their page is designed with that customer’s account information and services that they use most often. (Gen Y is used to doing this with Facebook today.) There can even be logic (such as what Amazon uses) that makes recommendations for products that a customer might want or need based on their history and activity in their account. Also, instead of making the customers have to go to the website all the time. Why can’t an RSS feed push information, based on criteria set by the customer, to the customer? If the customer finds that this website is actually useful they are more likely going to look favorably on the institution and want to come back to the website more often, too.
Instead of looking at how income can be extracted from these Web 2.0 methods from the start, banks should look at these opportunities as a cheaper product delivery (the ATM model) and education method. As time goes on history has shown that income opportunities make themselves apparent as the service matures. Also, the costs associated with these options are minimal. So, if one idea doesn’t pan out it can be discontinued and there hasn’t been much wasted expense.
Most retail banks and credit unions I have worked with have always been concerned about what other banks are doing. They don’t want to be the leader but they also don’t want to be the last one to adopt some (any) new product or service based on advanced technology. In the past this was necessary for smaller institutions because a lot of the technical options required a large capital outlay. It was better for them to stick to something that they knew worked from the outset so there would be few dollars wasted. Now, due to lower costs of entry the smart ones don’t have to play follow the leader. They can sit back, think about what they are trying to accomplish and what direction they need to go and then seek the tools (technology) to support and grow their business.
In conclusion, existing institutions would have a clear advantage with name recognition and trust in marketplace. They need to quickly embrace the new Web 2.0 delivery options and then evolve their business with them. It is possible that at some point we will see a purely web based bank emerge. However, it is unlikely in the near term based on the trust that needs to be built and the recent past unsuccessful examples stated above. At the present customers are still a little leery of such an option. As time goes on the older delivery methods can be phased out because the customers that were demanding them have either accepted the new methods as better or they aren’t there to demand the services any longer. This may take some time but it is better to keep the existing customers happy so they don’t flee rather than anger a whole bunch at once and not have any customers at all.
I would be interested in other examples you may have heard about. Also, how likely do you think a Web 2.0 bank can come online and be successful?
