I was reading this interesting post from Cindy, when it really caught my attention with this point made near the end!

Innovation and Transformation Wings: Social Networking : Good for Business or Not?

At this stage in the Canadian landscape there are some leaders in developing innovative Web 2.0 approaches in companies like: Bell Canada, MTS Allstream, Royal Bank of Canada, TD Canada Trust, and early days for Bank of Nova Scotia and CIBC as well.

I am pretty familiar with RBC’s efforts, at least on the customer external facing web, but not at all with CIBC, TD, BNS, or CIBC, as upcoming posts will review. Anyone care to help me out, with examples of what those banks are doing in a social/ web 2.0 context? Especially if it is internal and staff use only, some examples would be very useful.

This got my attention from Morris. I thought that Capone had cancelled their debti card programme, but it turns out they just wanted to re-release as their own service. Now this gets interesting. Not much to judge about the service on the US site linked from Morris’s post, so any additional information welcomed in the comments.

Decoupled Debit Card Lives Again! — from TMG’s Payment Industry Insider

NOW, all bets are off since CapOne has gone national and has tied it to their own reward program.

Potentially millions of consumers who are dissatisfied with their current bank or credit union, for whatever reason, may start using this debit card as their primary financial institution (PFI), since checks are virtually a thing of the past for a vast number of consumers already.

Further to my post back in April, its time to re-evaluate the Banks that do in fact get the web lifestyle, and are trying different things.  Offerring online banking does not get any mention in this.  Others, including especially netbanker do a great job at evaluating the latest online banking offerrings.  I am interested in how Banks are broadly embracing the web lifestyle.

Its not a long list, so suggestions are welcome. There are a few Credit Unions doing interesting stuff with blogs, and social media, and I will be looking to see if its clear that the conversations are opening up from those examples.

However an immediate example worth looking at is in Canada - RBC.

RBC Signature No Limit Banking Account: You Could Get a FREE Eee PC - RBC Royal Bank

If you’re looking to surf the net at a coffee shop, upload your latest vacation photos or just to stay in touch with your friends and family, a whole new mobile experience is now at your fingertips.

• Compact design, screen size 7″, only 0.92 kg
• Wireless connectivity
• Over 40 built-in applications

Yes indeed they are giving away free laptops, provided you open an account, actually deposit cash, register and pay some bills, and transfer some pre-authorised debits to them.

Something simple yet effective is the use of simple urls to test media. TV are things like rbc.com/tv1 or rbc.com/tv2. Another was rbc.com/switch5, with no doubt switch1, 2, etc.

Such a simple concept, and chance to learn about how people will react, and in different channels.

A search on google for a few keywords did not find much except “RBC” and that produced an sponsored link. So RBC are dabbling in Google advertising.

We should note that RBC are trying lots of small quiet initiatives many driven by their Applied Technology group. The other most recent is the rbcp2p.com where they have turned some crazy (not so crazy) students loose and doing a good job. The posts are probably (my judgement) moderated, but still come across as genuine.

They are also encouraging the team to engage in conversations elsewhere, and here and that is essential to get a blog noticed. Response on technorati remains low, and work is required to get the blog out there.

Which Banks understand the Web Lifestyle?
RBC gets a B for a good effort on a few different fronts, and thats a great start. Experiment, learn, and (yes Ron) innovate by trying new things. To get higher for RBC, and not fall back, will require some additional effectiveness and results in things like technorati.

Why should Banks think about the Microsoft acquisition of Powerset, a natural language search engine?

Powerset brings together a unique combination of scientific work in Artificial Intelligence, and Natural Language Analysis.

Interview With Barney Pell and Ramez Naam About Microsoft’s Powerset Acquisition: Integration By End Of Year

BP: I guess one way to think about it is like when you are learning how to diagram sentences in elementary school. You draw these trees of a sentence and find here is the noun phrase and a noun phrase has a determiner like “the” and then it has a noun like “dog” and here is a verb phrase, and it might have a verb like “barks” and then what does it mean for the that word, bark is a verb and it has a “S” at the end and the way that it works, which we call morphology, that’s the present tense of that verb. And then the whole sentence is composed of those pieces, and so the meaning is built out of those. So you draw these diagrams when you are learning how to do it. And the kind of knowledge that’s in a natural language processing system like Powerset is using is sort of like that.

Banks web pages are notoriously marketing oriented, with terminology that does not sound like poeples conversations:

• Savings & CDs Start Saving Today
• A great way to start saving — open your account with as little as $25

• • Free Checking Online
  • No monthly maintenance fee
  • No minimum balance required
  • No charge for using ATMs from another financial institution

These short bullets are a typical selection of how Banks communicate with customers online, and people have become used to reading those bullet form selections to uncover the nature of a Bank product.

The implication is that the new search methods may not naturally read the bullets in the right context, and “no monthly maintenance fee” for example, may not get associated with “Checking Accounts”.

Relevance to Bankwatch:
Natural language works, as I understand it, in development of meaning
within sentences. Having read Pell’s description of the system, and
considering this will comprise Microsoft’s search sometime in the next
year or two, it will be worthwhile to start thinking about the
evolution of search, and development of web pages.

No comment on the politics of this, but I love the disruptive influence internet is bringing to politics.

Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger » Blog Archive The changing power in Washington DC «

Back to why they are pissed. Barack Obama, Ross told me, is raising tons of money $50 to $100 at a time outside of this “bundling” system. The people in the old system don’t like that a new system is being built and that they aren’t part of it.

I said I would stop commenting on the credit crisis, but just wanted to throw in a statement of the blindingly obvious …. confidence in Banks balance sheets is at a very low ebb, and its not clear when this will get better.

FT.com / Equities / Volatile market - Shares hit as fears grow over financial turmoil

Investors’ fears of prolonged financial turmoil deepened on Thursday as blue-chip downgrades sent European and US shares into a tailspin and oil prices jumped above $140 a barrel for the first time.

I learned a whole new appreciation for passwords tonight. A family member and 15 others included in an old (10 year old) yahoo account received an email ostensibly from me with a bunch of spam crap in it. The only way I can see that the combination of that account and those addresses can co-exist is if someone entered that account, possibly with a script banging away with potential hits. It was a low level password.

Needless to say I have deleted all addresses from that account, and altered the password to an unguessable one. Also changed the passwords on my regular email accounts too. Anyone who has offerred their password to any of those social sites to invite friends should think carefully too and change their passwords. However my example is such an old account, that its not clear at all to me how it was uncovered.

Interestingly, I can assure you that if you are using gmail, then this problem will be invisible because the errant email goes to your spam folder. If you are using yahoo mail which is apparently incapable of filtering spam, then you might see this problem.

• Canada Gazette

  tags: Canada gazette, deposit taking institution

  • “regulated deposit-taking institution” means an entity that is supervised or regulated by a Canadian or foreign financial services or banking regulator and is authorized to accept deposits from the public. (institution de dépôt réglementée)

• NYSBD Staff Interpretations

  2002 memo in connection with an assertion that Paypal were illegally conducting banking activity. Result was no action taken.

  tags: nysbd, paypal

  • certain of PayPal’s services constituted illegal banking activity and that those services should not be provided to New York customers

What strikes me about this email initiated by Bill Gates over 5 years ago is not a techie issue. The important email is not Gates words … its the two emails right after that begin a thread that is classic internally focussed, and just wrong. If you see your Bank here, then start cringing.

Look for:

1. no reply all to Gates - so we have to assume Poole sent a separate email to Gates profusely apologising, then wrote the cool, no problem email to Amir & Chris.
2. Amir’s email refusing to acknowledge there is an issue. Note he says that Bill’s experience is not his. This is the opposite of customer focussed, but note that Bill did not see that response.

Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

It shows that even the Microsoft co-founder — who champions the “magic of software” — isn’t immune to the frustrations of everyday computer users. Keep in mind that this was more than five years ago, so it doesn’t necessarily reflect the specific state of things now.

The last time I saw this style of marketing was the telecoms back years ago when they were slamming customers; that involved automatically giving people new services, and if the customer did not cancel, they then continued with the new service and the new fee structure.

Today a family member got something in the mail from BMO Mosaik Master card that read:

Complete and return this form today to continue benefitting from the BMO Mosaik MasterCard CardAssist Plus Service without interruption

Note the key words ‘continue‘ and ‘without interruption‘. Also note the entire package was in a pull apart envelope thing designed just like the kind of serious confidential mailing that is used for Bank Card pin numbers, or new credit cards.

There is one problem …. said family member does not have the CardAssist product, whatever that is. Yet response is required to ensure no interruption! On reading the small print, family member has been set up ‘free’ for two months until August 24th, 2008. I think no payment is required for the service if no response is sent in, but to be honest the package was so convoluted and confusing, I will be checking in September to ensure that it is in fact cancelled.

This is just awful marketing of the worst 1990’s kind. That card company has millions of customers. Clearly the the intent is to have x% of customers send this package back in just so they are not interrupted in their service, and the Bank will gain by $39.99 annually in new fees.

New marketing, and customer expectation has moved on and its sad to see that there are some old style marketers still out there. Time for BMO to get a new agency methinks.

• Yahoo’s Ymail: Don’t really get it » mathewingram.com/work |

  Anyone younger than about 30 doesn’t seem interested in having an email address period, let alone caring whether it’s hermanzweibel@rocketmail.com or whatever. My teenaged daughters and their friends never use email anyway — they text message (in which case all you need is a phone number) or they use Facebook messages as a way of communicating. I send them email and they never get it. Do they have email addresses? Yes, and they are a combination of their names, underscores, numbers and nicknames, and so on — and they couldn’t care less.

  tags: mathewingram, ymail, GenY, email

  • Anyone younger than about 30 doesn’t seem interested in having an email address period, let alone caring whether it’s hermanzweibel@rocketmail.com or whatever. My teenaged daughters and their friends never use email anyway — they text message (in which case all you need is a phone number) or they use Facebook messages as a way of communicating. I send them email and they never get it. Do they have email addresses? Yes, and they are a combination of their names, underscores, numbers and nicknames, and so on — and they couldn’t care less.

• Yahoo Memo: The ‘Peanut Butter Manifesto’ - WSJ.com

  2006 memo by Brad Garlinghouse re Yahoo being spread too thin

  tags: yahoo, garlinghouse

  • An internal document by Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo senior vice president, says Yahoo is spreading its resources too thinly, like peanut butter on a slice of bread. Full text of the document is below.

• MoneyAisle Blog: A Glossary of Commonly Used Financial Terms (#1 in an Occasional Series)

  tags: moneyaisle, clblog, financial glossary

  • Education is one of the primary objectives of this blog. Occasionally we will explore and explain commonly used, and often misunderstood, banking terms. We recommend two resources that help define financial terms: Investor Words and Morgan Stanley.

• Lending Club platform illustration

  Process for funding loans at Lending Club. Describes the relationship between lenders, borrowers, LC and Webbnak. Graphic contained in the Lending Club S-1 filing.

  tags: clblog, lending club, social lending platform

In a reversal of usual government tendencies, the EU is planning to force companies to take a global perspective within the EU borders.

Finextra: EU to break down e-commerce borders

In a speech given in London, Kuneva said she will propose new legislation this autumn for creating an EU-wide set of rules governing online and in-store transactions. The “single, simple set of core rights and obligations” will make it easier to buy and sell across borders and bring down costs for shoppers.
…..

… will crack down on e-commerce companies that conduct business across member states but force customers to make purchases on country-specific Web sites.

xxx

• S1 Lending Club

  Form S-1
  Lending Club

  tags: clblog, lending club, SEC, social lending

  • Form S-1

    REGISTRATION
    STATEMENT

    UNDER

    THE SECURITIES ACT OF
    1933

     

    LendingClub
    Corporation

Google have a cool new feature that I predict will dominate the currenty confused website measurement space.

trends.google.com/ and select websites.

I put in 4 of the 5 Canadian Banks online banking log in pages, and got this result.  TD are first with RBC second.  BMO and Scotia are third equal.  It would not let me include a 5th, CIBC, but they should be around same or slightly lower than BMO and Scotia.

Note I also tried the public sites of all the 5 banks, and intestingly they came in very similar suggesting (to me) that few people look at the public sites.

With that lengthy statement, we now see how Lending Club intend to operate their business as defined in their SEC S-1 filing today.

Some more detail here.

sv1 Lending Club S-1 filing

The proceeds we receive from the sale of each series of Notes will be designated by the lender members who purchased the Notes of that series to fund an unsecured consumer loan originated through our platform to an individual consumer who is one of our borrower members.
… …

A series of Notes will be issued only if and when the corresponding member loan closes and is funded. A member loan will close and be funded if the borrower member loan request has received full funding commitments, or if the borrower member chooses to accept partial funding of the loan request after receiving funding commitments for the loan request.

And this taken from the description of the lending platform:

About the
Loan Platform

Through our online platform, we allow qualified borrower members
to obtain unsecured loans with lower interest rates than they
could through credit cards or traditional banks. We also provide
our lender members with the opportunity to indirectly fund
specific member loans with credit characteristics, interest
rates and other terms the lender members find attractive by
purchasing Notes that in turn are dependent for payment on the
payments we receive from those borrower member loans. As a part
of operating our lending platform, we verify the identity of
members, obtain borrower members’ credit profiles from
consumer reporting agencies such as TransUnion, Experian or
Equifax and screen borrower members for eligibility to
participate in the platform. We also service the member loans on
an ongoing basis. See “About the Loan Platform.”

The Notes. Our lender members will have the
opportunity to buy Notes issued by Lending Club. Lender members
will be able to designate the particular member loan that they
want the proceeds of each Note they purchase to be used to fund.
The holders of Notes of each series will have the right to
receive their pro rata portion of principal and interest
payments on their Note but only if, and to the extent, that we
receive loan payments on the corresponding member loan, net of
our service charge.

The Notes will be special, limited obligations of Lending Club
only and not obligations of any borrower member. The Notes are
unsecured and holders of the Notes do not have a security
interest in the corresponding member loans or the proceeds of
those corresponding member loans.

Lending Club is obligated to pay principal and interest on each
Note in a series only if and to the extent that Lending Club
receives payments from the borrower member on the corresponding
member loan funded by the proceeds of that series, and such
borrower member payments will be shared ratably among all Notes
of the series after deduction of Lending Club’s service
charge and any unsuccessful payment fees, collection fees or
payments due to Lending Club on account of the portion of the
corresponding member loan, if any, funded by Lending Club in its
capacity as a lender on the platform. If Lending Club were to
become subject to a bankruptcy or similar proceeding, the holder
of a Note may have a general unsecured claim against Lending
Club that is not limited in recovery to such borrower payments,
but, as described in more detail below, the matter is not free
from doubt. See “Risk Factors — If we were to
become subject to a bankruptcy or similar proceeding.”

In essence it appears that Lending Club make loans to borrowers. Lending Club then issues notes to investors, corresponding with the loans to borrowers. Seems simple enough. The rest of the prospectus details the risks as expected in any prospecus, and has a great amount of detail in words and tables on FICO scores, expected default rates, and other statistical data.

• FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - How imbalances led to credit crunch and inflation

  tags: inflation, ft.com, big picture

  • Inflation is a sustained rise in the price level: the result of too much money (or purchasing power) chasing too few goods and services. A one-off jump in commodity prices is not inflation. Nor need such a jump cause inflation. But a continuous rise in the relative price of commodities is a symptom of an inflationary process.

• FT.com / Credit bubble - FBI eyes big business in mortgage fraud probe

  Federal investigators are homing in on 19 “large corporations” – including investment banks, credit rating agencies, accounting firms and hedge funds – as part of a broad probe into mortgage fraud.

  tags: ft.com, credit crisis

  • Federal investigators are homing in on 19 “large corporations” – including investment banks, credit rating agencies, accounting firms and hedge funds – as part of a broad probe into mortgage fraud.

• International Banking Systems Journal

  tags: IBS, CommunityLend

  • CommunityLend: A borrower and a lender be

    Founded on the noblest principles of democracy, community, individual choice and responsibility, social lending may have the potential to do what Amazon has done to book selling. Lawrence Freeborn talks to Colin Henderson, chief technology officer and co-founder of the latest variant on the concept, CommunityLend.

This from Rahaf blogging from the searchengine strategies conference highlights what I think of as the dark side of SEO, and social media marketing. It lists all the bad ideas, which can be summarised as anything fake or pretending to appear to be something. Its about meaningful conversation, and trust. Click through for her principles.

» Blog Archive » SES & Social Media Strategy: what happened to ethics?! (A rant)

The internet has a short attention span and a long memory. Be smart. Treat your consumers like idiots and they won’t stick around for long.

A very full and complete article on the power of search and relationship to purchasing. The lead stat is the fact that 28% of clicks on a Google search page go to the pad search items.

Click through for Joey’s excellent summary of Fredrick Marckini’s keynote presentation at searchengine strategies conference in Toronto this week.

» Fredrick Marckini’s Keynote at Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto » The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century : Joey deVilla’s Personal Blog

72% of all clicks were in the natural results section; the remaining 28% were in the paid.

• Commonwealth Bank Group - Personal - Viridian Line of Credit - summary

  Commonwealth Bank of Australia all in one account

  tags: viridian, australia mortgage

  • Putting you in control

    Viridian is a convenient, all-in-one transaction account that combines your
    home loan, daily spending and savings into one, putting you in control.

• The ‘Australian Mortgage’ mixes savings and debt payment for hard working money - Parry Sound

  tags: mortgage, all in one account, australia mortgage

  • In fact, according to the London Free Press, more than 50 per cent of all new mortgages in Australia are opened as a combined chequing, savings and borrowing solution.

This just goes to show Banks have learned nothing. In typical form, and just when innovation is most needed, this one Bank (UK) falls back on the traditional ‘back to basics’ mentality, and eliminates the “luxury” of innovation.

BankerVision: Innovation is a luxury

The other day, I heard on the grapevine that a significant UK bank is cutting back its innovation function. You’ll forgive me, I’m sure, if I don’t name the bank, but reports of the contraction of innovation there were triangulated by several sources. Apparently, given the difficult times at present, innovation was seen to be an expensive “luxury”.

A banker would have to be a complete imbecile to not accept that these are trying times for Banks, that certain traditional ways of making money need to be re-engineered (ABCP), that customer demographics have shifted dramatically into groups that expect online and multiple channel access to services that transcend bill payment, and balance look up … need I go on.

So by eliminating the innovation function one of two choices are being made:

1. product and marketing groups can do the innovation [keep doing the same thing and expect new and different outcomes]
2. return to basics banking and lets just sell more stuff to existing customers [keep doing the same thing and expect new and different outcomes]

oh, did I mention that both choices are precisley the same choice [keep doing the same thing and expect new and different outcomes].

• Commonwealth Bank of Australia set to launch offensive on UK mortgage market - Business News, Business - The Independent

  2000 story on Commonwealth Bank’s plans for expansion

  tags: commonwealth bank of australia, mortgages

  • The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is preparing an aggressive assault on the UK mortgage market. The bank, which is looking to expand away from its increasingly crowded home market, is in the final stages of plans to launch a range of low-cost mortgages by the end of the year

• Gartner Identifies Top Ten Disruptive Technologies for 2008 to 2012 | eHomeUpgrade

  Gartner’s top 10 disruptive technologies 2008-2012:

  * Multicore and hybrid processors
  * Virtualisation and fabric computing
  * Social networks and social software
  * Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
  * Web mashups
  * User Interface
  * Ubiquitous computing
  * Contextual computing
  * Augmented reality
  * Semantics

  tags: Gartner, Prediction, 2012, trends

  • Gartner’s top 10 disruptive technologies 2008-2012:

    • Multicore and hybrid processors
    • Virtualisation and fabric computing
    • Social networks and social software
    • Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms
    • Web mashups
    • User Interface
    • Ubiquitous computing
    • Contextual computing
    • Augmented reality
    • Semantics

Steve is developing into a thought leader, and his insights are worthwhile, providing a good synopsis of trends. Three here, pertaining to FriendFeed:

1. peer influence as an emergent source of trust
2. search as an emergent tool
3. emergent millenial generation

Why Tiny FriendFeed Will Be as Big as Google - Advertising Age - Steve Rubel

First, there’s the rising influence of peers. Some 58% of opinion elites 35 to 64 said they trust a “person like me,” according to the Edelman Trust Barometer.

Second, there’s search. Some 90% of the online population searches, according to the Pew Internet for the American Life Project.

Finally, there’s the giant pool of Millennials. They have no problem living their lives online and are predisposed to creating and consuming content created by peers.

Colourful quote from a top Banker on the current mood in investment banking circles, but also the point that distraction creates opportunities for others.

FT.com / Lex / Best of Lex

As one legendary investment banker, now the head of his own advisory boutique, told me over breakfast on Thursday morning, ”we’re in the middle of the biggest s***storm since the great  depression and the last people who can be relied upon to provide an unbiased opinion about it are the chief executives of the US investment banks sitting on Level Three assets greater than their book value”.
….

The crisis on Wall Street may well create opportunities for boutiques that can focus on corporates rather than on the losses mounting at their own prop desks. Guess who’s advising France Telecom  in its proposed $41bn acquisition of TeliaSonera? US boutique Perella Weinberg. Does  Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers have time to help out with client pitches right now?

Following a conference in April which I attended, I was fortunate enough to be interviewed by Lawrence at IBS, and the result was a case study on CommunityLend.

International Banking Systems Journal

CommunityLend: A borrower and a lender be (registration required)

Founded on the noblest principles of democracy, community, individual choice and responsibility, social lending may have the potential to do what Amazon has done to book selling. Lawrence Freeborn talks to Colin Henderson, chief technology officer and co-founder of the latest variant on the concept, CommunityLend.

• Eric Schmidt in conversation with Ken Auletta | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com

  wow … this is the archetype business mission statement!

  tags: google, eric schmidt

  • The goal of the company is not to monetize everything. Our goal is to change the world. Monetization is a technology to pay for it.

  • Google is not different than the success of companies 30 years previously. The difference is it all happened quicker. It all happens in six months, not six years. At Sun we had two-year product roadmaps…at Google we have trouble doing six-month roadmaps.

    The compression of time occurs because there are so many more actors. The industrialization of 2 billion players coming online…we have to listen to them.

I have been applauding RBC’s internet initiatives, and this one from what looks like a press release is no exception … except I cannot find it? Anyone out there at RBC care to help me out here.

Finextra: RBC Direct Investing taps blogs for investment management

Community is part of a wider site redesign by RBC, which is also adding a ’sectors and industries’ page to allow investors to target areas and obtain more granular trending information. The bank says a ‘trading dashboard’ will be added this summer which will enable more active traders to consolidate research, tracking and execution on a single screen.

Don makes a terrific point here on the power of what he terms wikinomics, that comprises four principles:

1. openness
2. peering
3. sharing
4. act globally

CNW Group | DON TAPSCOTT | Troubled financial markets need to embrace Wikinomics-style transparency says Don Tapscott

“For example, investors should be able to “fly over” and “drill down” into a CDO’s underlying assets. With full data, they could readily graph the payment history, and correlate information such as employment histories, recent appreciation (or depreciation), location, neighborhood pricings, delinquency patterns, and recent neighborhood offer and sales activities. Now that AAA ratings have proved worthless, currently investors don’t have a glimmer of what they are being asked to buy. And they won’t start buying until they fully understand what they are purchasing, and that the price is fair.

There is little chance that the Banks would do this together, but what if one or two did it first. In the book, Don offers the example of Goldcorp who were having difficulty locating their next gold find, and CEO McEwan was frustrated by the ‘glacial’ progress from traditional geologists. So he took all their supporting geological data, and offierred it online, in the form of a contest.

Within weeks, they received 100’s of submissions but not jsut from geologists, but from students, mathematicians, military officers etc. The contestants identified 110 targets, 50% of which had not been previously identified. Over 80% of the targets yielded substantial gold reserves. McEwan estimates 2 - 3 years were shaved from the normal process.

The Banking system suffers the same problem as Goldcorp. Glacial movement in determining the true underlying value of ABCP supporting assets.

Tapscott offers that if the data were made available online, the data that supports the paper, then the internet community could solve the problem faster and more effectively by providing insights, solutions, early warnings, and no approaches that could never be developed by information protective bankers.