Nationwide Insurance is Fourth Financial Institution with Multiple iPhone Apps

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Auto Financing, Insurance, iPhone, Mobile Banking, Nationwide Insurance

image In November, we predicted that large financial institutions would each offer dozens of mobile apps targeted to various lines of business and/or customer segments (previous post). PNC Bank, Wells Fargo and Chase each have two apps in the iPhone store.

Three weeks ago, a fourth financial company added its second app: Nationwide Insurance.

The company originally launched an app (inset) geared towards its insurance customers in April 2009 (press release; iTunes store link). This app is designed to assist its insurance customers when they have an accident. The most recent version includes a toolkit, auto claim form, agent finder and even a flashlight.

Then in mid-December, the company released a second app geared towards automobile shoppers, Cartopia (screenshots below; iTunes link; press release). It helps buyers research prospective cars on the go.

By inputting a vehicle identification number (VIN), consumers can quickly access the following info on a prospective vehicle:

  • Car specs (fuel economy, dimensions, weight, etc.)
  • Average retail and wholesale prices
  • 5-year cost-of-ownership estimates
  • Original warranty info
  • Safety info
  • History of the VIN number, powered by Experian’s AutoCheck (similar to Carfax report; limited to six free lookups each month; note 1)

In addition, users can calculate monthly loan payments with a built-in loan calculator. Nationwide also provides links for customers to call in to apply for vehicle financing and or receive an insurance quote. Unfortunately, there is no online loan application or insurance price quote engine.

Finally, the app contains space to keep notes and rate the cars you are considering purchasing.

Relevance to Netbankers: If you are in the auto loan and/or insurance business, getting your name in front of car buyers as they shop is the ultimate marketing coup. While you may not be able to emulate all the functions in Nationwide’s app (note 2), even a simple loan calculator and note-taking area, along with links to your call center, could drive incremental business.

                                                                                    Cartopia #2 Main Loan info with link to
     Cartopia #1: Splash screen                          insurance quote (via voice call)

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Notes:
1. I was unable to access the report on my test vehicle; the error message said it was temporarily unavailable.
2. Although the app is loaded with features, its UI is a bit clunky and the app is only rated two stars in Apple’s App Store. Consequently, a slimmed down, simpler app, would appeal to many users.  
3. For more info on financial services opportunities on the iPhone, see our March Online Banking Report.

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A Look at Mint’s Twitter Aggregation Site: Money Tweets

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Intuit, Mint, Twitter

image Leave it to Mint to make 140 characters of personal finance chatter sexy. Yesterday, I noticed a link to a new feature called Money Tweets tucked away at the bottom of an account-alert (see inset below; note 1). The site launched in November (press release), but I was all wrapped up in P2P payments at the time (note 2) and never looked at it.

imageMint’s effort is the best use I’ve seen of Twitter as a content-creation tool (see screenshot #1, below; note 3). And once established, the site basically runs on autopilot, making it a cost-effective way to bring fresh, real-time content to your customers. 

Money Tweets has five content areas:

  • Aggregated tweets from 20+ writers on five subject areas: savings, investing, budgeting, loans, and retirement
  • Tweets about Mint using Twitter search
  • Tweets from Mint using its Twitter stream
  • Tweets from anyone answering the company’s Question of the Day such as today’s topic, “Is now the time to buy a house?” (upper right in screenshot below)
  • Tweets from anyone using keywords taken from personal finance trending topics

Bottom line: Aggregation of the tweets from personal finance experts (with extra credit for adding your own voice to the stream) is a promising tactic for your online marketing plan. But most (all?) financial institutions will want to steer clear of streaming unmoderated tweets from anyone mentioning your company’s name. That’s going to cause way too many internal headaches as it attracts spam and customer complaints. 

Main page at Mint’s Money Tweets (link, 8 Jan. 2010)

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Notes:
1. As an aside, Mint’s superb graphic design extends even to its email alerts, which look like a sticky note on the screen.
2. For more on the P2P payments market, see our latest Online Banking Report, published earlier this week, Making the Case for Person-to-Person Payments. 
3. For more on using Twitter, see our May report, Connecting to Customers with Twitter.

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Another Bank Unleashes Remote Deposit for the iPhone: Royal Bank America

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: iPhone, Remote Deposit Capture, Small Business

image Another bank is about to join USAA (post), WV United FCU  (post), and Randolph-Brooks FCU (post) in the smartphone-enabled deposit sphere. Royal Bank America, a $1.3 billion (asset) Philadelphia-area institution, is in final testing of its new deposit-taking iPhone app called RoyalRDC (iTunes link).

image The new app appeared in Apple’s iTunes store on Monday, but currently the bank is accepting only beta testers (see screenshot below). The app, said to be coming “within weeks,” allows a check to be deposited within 30 seconds using any model iPhone.

The bank is currently promoting the benefits of remote deposit on its home page (see screenshot below). Not only can RDC users skip the trip to the branch, they have 2 additional hours to make a deposit for same-day credit (6 PM instead of 4 PM). That’s an enticing additional benefit nicely highlighted through the shaded-clock image below. 

Royal Bank America homepage (7 Jan. 2010)
Note: This is the homepage view after refreshing the page once; yellow highlight is mine.

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Royal Bank call for beta testers (link)

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Note: For more info on mobile banking on the iPhone, see our March Online Banking Report.

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Nobel Winner Calls for First National Bank of Innovation

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Small Business, Strategies

image Perusing the newsstand at the Minneapolis airport last night, I picked up the latest Harvard Business Review issue entitled Reinvent. One article in particular prompted me to shell out the $16.95 for the double issue: Wanted: A First National Bank of Innovation by Edmund Phelps, a 2006 Nobel winner in economics, and Leo Tilman, a Columbia prof and author of Financial Darwinism.

Their case was laid out at the beginning of the article:

Ever since Alexander Hamilton, the U.S. economy has been about ideas, experimentation, and exploration: businesspeople imagining new concepts and launching new ventures; entrepreneurs engineering new products or methods based on new ideas; marketers conceiving of niches for new products or new niches for old ones; managers and consumers assessing novel products; and financiers with strategic vision judging which innovations to back.

The authors argue that it’s the funding of new ideas, not arbitrary pet stimulus projects, that really drives our economy in the long-term. And with credit and venture funding difficult to obtain, the government should step in with a new GSE (government-sponsored entity), their so-called First National Bank of Innovation, to help fill the funding gap.

My take: After the recent debacles with the major GSEs, Fannie and Freddie, I’m not so sure that we need more taxpayer guarantees on our nation’s books. But the economy would probably be better off long-term if some of the money flowing to housing and roads was invested in entrepreneurial-driven activity.

But, I’m not about to get involved (again) in telling the government what to do. Instead, I’d rather see the private sector step up and implement the ideas presented by Phelps and Tilman. Why not create your own in-house Bank of Innovation, where local startups could go for support, banking services, and help in finding financing. Umpqua Bank has been trying some interesting things in this area (see Umpqua Lab screenshot below).

Pulling ourselves back up from The Great Recession is no easy task. And banks, rightly or wrongly, are currently seen as part of the problem. Wouldn’t it be great if people started seeing the financial industry as part of the solution? That’s a New Year’s resolution I think we can all get behind.

Umpqua Bank labs microsite <umpqualab.com> (6 Jan. 2010)

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Note: See our recent Online Banking Report for more ideas on how to serve small- and micro-businesses through the online and mobile channels.

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Thanks to WorkLight, a long-term NetBanker.com sponsor

By Eric Mattson Posted on
Categories: Worklight

Happy new year to you all!

WorkLightLogo.gif

Before we dive into our regular blogging in the new year, we wanted to take a moment to thank WorkLight for their continued support of NetBanker. They sponsored the blog for several months in 2009 and recently made a long-term commitment for 2010.

WorkLight is, in their own words, a “software-based solution” for “enterprise-class widgets for mobile, desktops and Web” that provides “highest levels of security, scalability and integration” for those widgets.

Please consider checking out Worklight’s free demo of their secure widget technology if you’re interested in learning more. 

Thanks! Now back to our usual blogging.

ericphoto.jpgEric Mattson is CEO of Online Financial Innovations, the parent company of NetBanker, Online Banking Report and the Finovate Conference Series. He can be reached at eric@netbanker.com.

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Discover Card’s User-Generated Card Design Contest

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Credit/Debit Cards, Discover Card, Facebook, User-Generated Content

image Personalized card designs have been offered by Capital One and others for years. But I’ve yet to see the idea turned into a contest. Discover Card is running a promotion for the best design submitted through its microsite or Facebook page.

The winner will pocket $1000 and the design will be featured on the next Discover Card Student Card. There is also another $1000 split among five runner-up designs.

To enter the contest, users must log in at the Discover microsite using Facebook connect (see screenshot #2, below). After creating the design, users end up on a Facebook page where they can provide optional personal information (screenshot #3). 

The promotion is powered by the Graffiti Facebook app.

As you can see by my handiwork (inset), most card designs are pretty crude. But there are also some pretty creative entrants. There is only one design tool available, a brush you run with your mouse. The only variations are color, brushstroke width and opacity. No uploads are allowed, so you cannot add any fancy graphics created in other apps.

The contest ends tomorrow and so far there are nearly 5,000 entries. 

Bottom line: It’s a drop-dead simple contest with excellent Facebook integration and a link to apply for Discover’s Student Card. It’s a great idea, with good execution, and the card issuer will end up with a cool new card design for a relatively small cost. Grade A+ 

Thanks to Payments News for the link.

1. Discover Card microsite (31 Dec. 2009)
Note: Homepage showing the 10-most recent entries with our lame effort in the lower-right.

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2. Discover Card design creation page

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3. Facebook optional personal info page

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4. Designs appear on the Discover Facebook page under the Graffiti tab (link)
Note: Considering the crude input tool, some of the designs are amazing. As you can see, I will not be in the running for prize money. 

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Banking the Holidays: 2009 Edition

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, PNC Bank

imageIt’s a bit of a holiday tradition at Netbanker (note 1), checking out the top-20 banks to see if they’ve upped their retail game during the year-end holiday period. Or at least pushed out a holiday greeting to visitors, such as Google’s greeting to Gmail users yesterday (inset). 

It was pretty much business as usual at most large bank sites. The only top-10 bank with any major holiday message this week was PNC Bank, with its clever Christmas Price Index, which values the items listed in the 12 Days of Christmas song. The total this year: $21,500, up 1.8% over 2008 (press release).

PNC has calculated the price index for 26 years and displays a bar graph at their CPI microsite (below). It’s been online for a number of years; we first blogged about it in 2004.

This year, we surfed the 20 largest U.S. banks on Dec. 22 and Dec. 24 (screenshots are in the next post; note 2). On the first visit, we found six top-20 banks with a holiday mention on the homepage (rank in parenthesis). We took a tour again this morning expecting to find a few more holiday messages. There was only one newcomer, ING Direct, and surprisingly, three of the original six had pulled down their holiday ads already. In all only four top-20 banks have a holiday message today (24 Dec., 9 AM Pacific time). 

December 22 December 24
5. PNC Bank 5. PNC Bank
13. TD Bank 15. Regions Bank
14. Citizens (RBS) 16. Fifth Third
15. Regions 17. ING Direct
16. Fifth Third  
20. Harris Bank (BMO)  

Luckily, an astute reader emailed yesterday to let us know that their bank was decked out in the holiday spirit, $2 billion (deposits) Union Bank and Trust (below) headquartered in Bowling Green, Virginia.

Union Bank & Trust (24 Dec. 2009)

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Note:
1. Previous Netbanker December holiday-marketing posts (2007, 2006, 2006, 2004)
2. Rankings based on deposits on 31 Dec. 2008 (list here)

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Screenshots of Holiday Promotions at Top-20 US Banks

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, PNC Bank

Here are the screenshots that support our previous blog entry.

Holiday Promotions and Themes from Top-20 Banks

5. PNC Bank (22 Dec. 2009)

image_thumb[7]

Landing page <pncchristmaspriceindex.com>
Note: According to Compete, received 25,000 unique visitors in Dec. 2008

image28_thumb

 13. TDBank (22 Dec.)
Note: The promotion was gone when we checked back today (24 Dec.)

image4_thumb

Landing page

image7_thumb

14. Citizens (RBS) (22 Dec.)
Note: The gift ad was gone when we checked back today (24 Dec.), but the free electronic calendar (to the left of the gift ad) was still running.

image13_thumb

Landing page

image10_thumb

15. Regions (22 Dec.)

image16_thumb

16. Fifth Third Bank (22 Dec.)

image22_thumb

17. ING Direct (24 Dec.)

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20. Harris Bank (BMO)
Note: The points ad had been pulled down when we checked back this morning (24 Dec.)

image25_thumb

Note:
1. Previous Netbanker December holiday-marketing posts (2007, 2006, 2006, 2004)
2. Rankings based on deposit on 31 Dec. 2008 (list here)

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Out of the Inbox: ING Direct’s Year-End Pitch for IRAs

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Email Marketing, Email Samples, ING Direct, Retirement savings

image This is one of the better times of year to market tax-deferred accounts. ING Direct targets consumers plotting New Year resolutions with this intriguing headline:

————————————————
Subject: Is an IRA on your “to do” list?
From: saver@ingdirect.com
Received: 22 Dec 2009, 5:07 PM Pacific
————————————————-

There’s not much to the message. No offer. No graphics. No tease. Just a solid message reiterating the potential tax benefits and emphasizing ING Direct’s no-fee options.

Grade: B+

Email screenshot
Note: This message was sent to an existing customer with a savings account and Sharebuilder account, but no IRA.

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Landing page (link)
Note: Landing page URL is <retirement.ingdirect.com>

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Little Things Matter: Holiday Hours at the Top of Mercantile Bank of Michigan’s Homepage

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Mercantile Bank of MI, Website Usability & Design

Every year at this time, I poke around the financial Web looking for holiday themes. While Mercantile Bank of Michigan hasn’t posted a virtual Santa snow globe, it’s done something more useful: posted holiday hours on the top of its homepage. The bank should also note its telephone and online support hours, if different. 

Mercantile Bank of Michigan homepage (22 Dec. 2009, 2 PM Pacific)

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Out of the Inbox: Costco Email Gives PayPal’s Bill Me Later Top Billing

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Alt Payments, Email Samples, PayPal

imageI rarely open emails from retailers, especially around the holidays. As someone who has checked the “send me offers” box on registration forms for a decade, I’m inundated. But every once in a while I check out the Costco email to see what outrageous deals they are offering and, more importantly, whether any financial services are being showcased. For example, in March we wrote about the $90 Sharebuilder promo from Costco. 

Last Friday, the big-box giant did not disappoint. It had two financial offers above the fold:

  • Extended-payment option: A surprisingly large and prominent pitch for PayPal’s extended-payment program, Bill Me Later (see inset and upper-right corner in screenshot below). The BML option allows Costco customers to defer payment for an unspecified amount of time interest-free if paid in full by the due date (typically a few months out), or to pay the amount back over time at an 18.99% APR.
  • Costco cash cards: While it’s no surprise that the retailer is pitching store cards 7 days out from Christmas Day (see landing page below), I was surprised they weren’t merchandising them more aggressively. The problem was that even with rush delivery, the plastic card wasn’t guaranteed to arrive before Christmas, so it wasn’t a great gift option. The retailer could use an online giftcard option for instant delivery.

Costco holiday email (Friday, 18 Dec. 2009)

Costco email 18 Dec 2009

Bill Me Later landing page (link)

BillMeLater landing page

Costco prepaid card landing page (link)

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