Online Banking: What's on the way?
With retail banks rolling up their sleeves and heading for a battle of the savings accounts, their Web developers and systems integrators are similarly preparing for the ultimate holy grail of online banking: account aggregation.
Arab Bank's manager for e-commerce support, Gino Ferraro, says that while the bank entered the online arena later than most, it aims to soon be at the forefront of account aggregations offerings.
-Basically you will be able to see all your account information from the Arab Bank site," says Ferraro.
While shying away from nominating specific launch dates, Westpac, St George, Suncorp Metway, and Bendigo Bank are among the industry players signalling 2002 as the year they introduce their aggregated account offerings. As a result any imminent launch may be spoilt by a serious case of 'too many cooks'. AMP already offers an early version of account aggregation through its Account Minder product.
Kevin Powell, head of personal banking in e-business for Westpac, pointed out that there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of developing standards for data transfer within in the global banking industry.
-There is a lot of synergy to be gained from having a common standard, so we can share information with one another," Powell says. -As an industry, we haven't cracked online collaboration yet. We are looking at one online voice for transactions, so as to provide high quality of services throughout the industry."
However, according to Global Reviews' Shiffman, online banks would do well to focus less on rolling out new technology, and spend more time and money looking to the functionality and service levels of their sites.
-As a wider demographic takes to online banking, customers will begin to make decisions based on the service levels provided by the banks," Shiffman says. -They have made significant improvements in the last three years, but as things stand they could all improve their service and support levels."
Shiffman says the banks should be more focussed on the nature of their service and the usability of their site.
-Often simple things like offering products to the end users in terms the user understands," Shiffman says. -If I want to buy a car I want to see a button which says 'car loan', not 'secured personal loan'. Secured personal loan doesn't mean anything to me."
Shiffman also bills more immediate access to service and support as fundamental to the development of online banking.
-We should start to see secured chat, and phone queries linked directly into the account," Shiffman says. -Most banks still take 24 hours to respond to an e-mail, and that is really quite poor."
In this respect, HSBC believes it is leading the way, as it trials live online support on some pages.
-If you get stuck at any stage you can signal for help, and have our support centre take control of your cursor and basically complete the transaction while you watch," explained HSBC's Kelly, stressing that the service was limited at this stage to only a small part of the overall site. -We are still trialing it at this point, so we have it on a few pages on the site."
With most banks in Australia making the switch from a traditional OS2 platform to a Windows-based system sometime in 2002, users can also look forward to tighter integration between branches, ATMs, online services and phone banking.
According to Paul Mitchell, Asia Pacific retail marketing director at leading banking technology vendor NCR, Internet-integrated ATM technology already exists, and is waiting for the banks to catch up.
-Clearly we are looking at ways the ATMs will be integrated into Web banking, but we are not going to offer solutions which will leave people standing in queues," Mitchell says. -We are talking about a more personalised service, where your online user profile can be read as you are using the machine - and provide you with relevant information."
While the commercial implications of higher ATM and Internet integration smell suspiciously like yet another spam channel, Mitchell insists that it will be in the banks interests to provide information relevant to the user.
-It won't just be commercial information at all, it could be anything from share prices, to surf conditions," Mitchell says.
The Internet is also paving the way for mobile solutions, but the early indications are that service will vary significantly from bank to bank.
Having already dabbled in WAP technology, some of the banks are more cautious about mobile phone-based information delivery, whereas others are already providing balances via SMS.
Lawrence Sank, marketing manager for Wireless application service provider iTouch, says banks were playing it safe when it comes to location-based services, however he expects services to continue to be rolled out gradually.
-[Banks] have to be very careful about security," Sank says. -So they are a lot more cautious than other industries. However relevant systems are currently being developed and will probably play a much greater role in the next generation of mobile access."
Why didn't you include Adelaide Bank (http://www.adelaidebank.com.au)? It provides a good range of services with the exception of not being able to credit someone else's account quickly.