Online banking services based around specific financial packages such as ING Direct and HSBC, appear to be going from strength to strength, despite assertions by traditional banks that their presence is not being felt.
According to Amanda Houlihan, ING Direct currently has more than 400 thousand customers, representing a deposit base of AU$8 billion, and while she says some of these funds have been lured away from banks, she attributed part of the growth to an increasingly risk-averse public.
"We are getting people who are taking their money into safer havens, as well as people who have never saved before," Houlihan says. "Because they don't have to have a minimum deposit we have a lot of people come to us who have never saved before."
Staving off criticisms regarding the long term viability of ING's attractive account offers, Houlihan points out that the Internet enables ING Direct to operate in a virtually overhead free environment when compared to the banks.
"The day we open branches is when you will see our cost structures affected," Houlihan says. "We have made a promise to our customers never to introduce fees, and we never will."
As HSBC's Kelly points out, customers base their banking choices on products, rather than Web site functionality, but nonetheless expect ongoing improvements to online services.
Who's logging on and what's on offer in 2003
Despite the increasing prevalence of online credit unions and specific saving services, the big four continue to attract the majority of traffic to Internet banking sites. With a vested interest in migrating customers to online services, the banks have been keeping up the pace when it comes to Web functionality.
Far and away in the lead is the Commonwealth Bank which attracts 1,187,000 unique users according to Nielsen NetRatings.
Having launched in 1997, the Commbank Web site has matured and diversified into a range of offerings including credit card applications and share trading. Marcus Judge, general manager for e-commerce for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia says current user trends have seen customers moving away from transactional banking to take advantage of different services.
"People are becoming more familiar with what you can do on the Internet and more confident with it," Judge said. "There is a small group of people who would rather deal with us online, but most use the service to gather information about their options and use it in conjunction with the branches."
Like Kelly, Judge says customers aren't basing their bank selection on Web-based services; however, the success of the online service is largely based on reliability and usability factors.
Other banks, such as Brisbane-based Suncorp Metway, and Perth-based BankWest, are using their online offerings to expand into other states without the overheads associated with an extensive branch network.
Mark Solari, head of retail banking technology for Suncorp Metway, says the bank is keen to keep a consistent experience between all customer touch-points over the next 12 months, as it expands into other states through premises acquired back in the September 2001 take-over of GIO.
"Success from an Internet perspective is about maintaining the scale of the customer bank and matching services to customer needs," Solari says. "We are seeing increasing participation by the over 50s, and going forward, customer segmentation will be based on needs, not demographics."
With banks such as St George already integrating SMS services into its Internet banking service, and financial institutions such as Egoli, AMP, Westpac and the Commonwealth offering account aggregation services, "mobile offerings" and "online aggregation" services are promising to become 2003's industry buzz-words.
However, with the technology backing such services yet to be proven, Solari, and others in the industry, prefer to tread more cautiously when it comes to emerging technologies.
"Mobile messaging, and account aggregation sound seductive, but offering online banking services is about being able to meet with customer expectations, not technology for technology's sake," Solaris said.
Unfortunately, the reviews only give the features of the banking sites. I have an HSBC, Commonwealth Bank, ANZ and UK based First Direct bank account.
I can say for a fact that the HSBC online banking facility is very poor in comparison to the others with possibly the worst most cryptic transaction list of all the institutions I know of! Looking at the transaction list is totally cryptic and users have to click on every transaction to see what it is - even an ATM withdrawal!!! Not only that but HSBC is extremely slow. However, their online savings account is excellent and offers me the most attractive interest rates.
My favourite is Commonwealth Bank Netbank for it's simplicity and speed. ANZ is also good but has far more clutter on the screen.