I have yet to see the first financial portal that can be called user-centric and user-friendly. When I look at the website to manage my bank or credit card account, it’s quite sad to see that most of them are like still stuck somewhere in the pre-Web 2.0 era. I am not only talking about the fancy hocus pocus Ajax stuff, but really about usability and the YOU experience: the application should be centered about what I want and centered around my life (yes I am very egocentric) and not that I have to figure out how the bank thinks I should handle my account. One of the frequent readers of this Technology Blog pointed me recently to some proof of concept (PoC) of the bank for the digital natives, where every feature has been thoroughly investigated how it can come forward to my needs: the Frank Bank (http://www.thefrankbank.com). It incorporates all the Web 2.0 concepts like tagging, gadgets (small applications you can add) and personalization of data. On top of that it lets you administer your budget with fancy bar- and piecharts and gives you different views on your data. When you look at the video on the URL mentioned earlier you can see that one of the interesting features is that everything is based on tagging. You can add tags like “shopping” or “work” to every expense and thus create views on your expenses based on the tags. This is a similar approach that Google’s Gmail use to categorize your emails (instead of using the old-skool folder based approach). That gives you a grip on your shopping expenditure because you can perfectly get statistics of your shopaholic alter ego and decide whether you still need those Manolo Blahniks or not. I’d say that the first bank that offers this to its clients will change the way how we look at financial portals. Trust me, this is quite revolutionary. It’s banking, but redefined.
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Banks do not care about webX.0, they only care for money. Their customers are quite the same, the interest percentage is mostly leading. The few customers that are interested in more than an interest rate can use Wesabe: <a href="http://www.wesabe.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wesabe.com/</a> (and it even better: it has an API ;)).
Of course banks are only after money. The moment a significant number of customers are willing to swicth bank in order to have that kind of service, though, I bet banks are going to consider it :)
The point here is, the real demographic for such an online account is either small (the hardcore nerds who keep up with innovative technology) or in the mid-term future (i.e., the kids out there who are growing up using facebook and the like).
What's worse, I think there are only a few countries in the world where a sufficient pool of potential clients can ever be reached... Of course the US, and I'm guessing UK, India, Japan, Korea... What else?
I personally would love the idea of a world-wide bank (no, I don't mean a bank group with different legal entities in different countries) implementing such a solution: after all, national companies are a really 1900's thing :P
But that's a different matter, and I have no idea how the current laws would take this...
The point here is, the real demographic for such an online account is either small (the hardcore nerds who keep up with innovative technology) or in the mid-term future (i.e., the kids out there who are growing up using facebook and the like).
What's worse, I think there are only a few countries in the world where a sufficient pool of potential clients can ever be reached... Of course the US, and I'm guessing UK, India, Japan, Korea... What else?
I personally would love the idea of a world-wide bank (no, I don't mean a bank group with different legal entities in different countries) implementing such a solution: after all, national companies are a really 1900's thing :P
But that's a different matter, and I have no idea how the current laws would take this...
For a huge number of people their bank account is all about one important figure - the current balance (or more accurately "how much have I got left"). At the moment the kids growing up with facebook etc don't care about budgets or getting a better electricty deal. They don't want to spend time tagging/categorising every expense and looking at budgets, and at that point the whole model falls down. It will take a few years for these people to grow up and generate the demand for this sort of service - even then there are a whole host of data sharing and privacy issues to be sorted out (do you really want your friends comparing your spending to theirs?)
That said there are a lot of ideas there that would appeal to the more mature online bank users right now, expenditure graphs, comparisons to (your own) average spending/income - stuff that needs minimal extra input from the user, but helps with managing your money.
That said there are a lot of ideas there that would appeal to the more mature online bank users right now, expenditure graphs, comparisons to (your own) average spending/income - stuff that needs minimal extra input from the user, but helps with managing your money.
Banks can benefit a lot from Web 2.0 and especially from the effects of the long tail. From what I see, is that banks are really understanding that too.
As one of the creators of The Frank Bank I can only agree with Lee that it’s time for a new banking experience.
What is probably the strongest driver behind the need to redefine banking is that customers are currently taking control of their information (and for reader that want to understand the underlying logic behind this I recommend the McKinsey books NetGain&NetWorth) where we have for example seen the release of www.mint.com in US.
In Scandinavia over 90% of all private consumers transactions are digital, which shows a great readiness for the next step: customer intimacy. Add the digital natives and their advanced demands on digital services and an overcrowded hyper competition. There is a need to go from being a platform for transactions to a valued advisor position centred around assisting the customer in financial decisions.
I should also point out that the video is not covering the whole concept (the most exciting parts are currently being pitched to a bank), but a great part is where we are connecting the online experience to the bank branches.
PS: 25% of the Scandinavians are dissatisfied with their bank (SIFO; 2008).
Regards Johan
What is probably the strongest driver behind the need to redefine banking is that customers are currently taking control of their information (and for reader that want to understand the underlying logic behind this I recommend the McKinsey books NetGain&NetWorth) where we have for example seen the release of www.mint.com in US.
In Scandinavia over 90% of all private consumers transactions are digital, which shows a great readiness for the next step: customer intimacy. Add the digital natives and their advanced demands on digital services and an overcrowded hyper competition. There is a need to go from being a platform for transactions to a valued advisor position centred around assisting the customer in financial decisions.
I should also point out that the video is not covering the whole concept (the most exciting parts are currently being pitched to a bank), but a great part is where we are connecting the online experience to the bank branches.
PS: 25% of the Scandinavians are dissatisfied with their bank (SIFO; 2008).
Regards Johan
