New CU Blogs: Midwest Financial, Old Hickory, and Secure One Credit Unions

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Blogs, Credit Unions

In our blogging report published last fall (here), we predicted there would be 300 U.S. financial institution blogs by the end of this year. Five months into the year, we are way behind on that projection, with about two dozen financial institutions blogging. That includes just two banks (Wells Fargo and Bank of Internet) and 20+ credit unions (see previous coverage here).

We found three new credit union blogs this weekend, another 1% of the way towards that prediction, which looks high. But I still think there will be close to 200 by year-end. And I promise not to profile ALL of them here.

My Credit Union Blog

MidWest Financial Credit Union and its affiliate, University of Michigan Health System Financial, launched a joint blog on May 14. Although, these two financial institutions are part of the same company, joint blogging efforts across several credit unions in the same geographic area could make a lot of sense.

My Credit Union Blog is attractively laid out and has five postings in its first week, several that are fairly long and fall into the "consumer education" category. It's fine to sprinkle those in over time, but don't overwhelm your readers with long lists of tips and tools. They can already read that stuff at just about any financial website.

Your blog should primarily have short, interesting articles of local interest. Limit the educational pieces to one or two per month at most. Again, Piedmont CU is the best FI blog I've seen in terms of content (see previous post here).

My Credit Union Blog from MidWest Financial CU and UMHS Financial

Old Hickory Credit Union

Old Hickory Credit Union's blog began last week with the obligatory welcome message and the first entry on going green with electronic statements, always a good blog subject. With just one entry, it's too early to comment on the content. But the layout is clean, it wisely uses it's own URL <blogohcu.org>, unique template, and covers the basics in the About section introducing the two bloggers behind the effort. Hopefully, over time the blog will be spruced up with more graphics and pictures.

Old Hickory CU blog

Secure One Credit Union

Unlike the other two new blogs, Secure One Credit Union, should consider pulling its blog down until it has more resources to commit to the project. The blogger platform makes it look cheap (which it is), but the fatal flaw is lack of content. There are only two entries since its March 20 launch, and the last, which is more than a month old, simply lists CD rates, something that can easily be found on a regular website. Here's the link: <securefirstcu.blogspot.com>.

You don't have to blog that often, but once or twice per week is a good rule of thumb, and at least some of the posts should be original content, not cut-and-paste jobs from your website.

Secure One CU blog

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One-quarter of 50 Largest Online Advertisers are From Financial Services

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Metrics & Market Research

Link to Freecreditreport.com by Experian It's no surprise that financial services companies are some of the largest online advertisers. It's been that way since the medium began accepting advertising in 1995. However, you might be surprised who was the number 1 financial-services advertiser in 2006: Experian with $128 million, 50% more than Microsoft's $82 million. Only five companies spent more online in 2006: Vonage, AT&T, Dell, Disney and GM.

The credit bureau and direct marketing company has expanded its direct web-based financial services presence via acquisition over the last few years and now owns prolific advertisers such as LowerMyBills.com and FreeCreditReport.com.

Most financial companies in the top-50 were in the brokerage and investment category with TD Ameritrade, Scottrade, E*Trade and Fidelity all in the $100 to $120 million category. Non-brokerages included IAC/Interactive parent of Lending Tree and GetSmart, American Express, Capital One, Bank of America, and the biggest surprise in the top-50: LoanWeb with $37 million, more than any retail bank in the country, except BofA. 

Here's the financial services companies in the top 50. Data in from TNS as cited in Online Media, Marketing, & Advertising Magazine (OMMA) last week (here). Previous NetBanker coverage is here.

Overall Rank/Company/2006 Online Advertising Expenditures

6   Experian               $128 million
9   IAC/Interactive    $123 million (includes non-financial products)
10  TD Ameritrade     $120 million
14  E*Trade                $107 million
15  Scottrade             $105 million
18  Fidelity                 $98 million
23  American Express $80 million 
25  Charles Schwab    $72 million
29  Forex Capital Markets $57 million
34  Capital One           $53 million
35  Morgan Stanley     $53 million
44  Bank of America    $43 million
48  LoanWeb               $37 million

Source: TNS, 2007

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First Look: Verity CU’s New Blog

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Blogs, Trabian, Verity CU

Seattle’s Verity CU, the first financial institution in the world with an external company blog, is replacing its aging Blogger version, in use since the December 2004 launch.

Verity posted a clever “farewell” in its old blog on May 11 (see screenshot below) and promised a link to the new version “soon.” A week later, the new blog is live, and you’ll want to take a look at it <blog.veritycu.com> (screenshot below).   

Link to Trabian The new site is pleasing to look at, easy to follow, and state-of-the-art in just about every way, exactly what you’d expect from Trabian, the red-hot social media design firm. I especially like the middle column which showcases  recent blog postings by department: marketing, member services, executive, HR, IT, accounting, and business services. It helps expose more great posts, while demonstrating to members that the blog is a true company-wide effort. Each department’s posts can also be accessed through the Categories area in the lower-right.

I give it the first A+ of the year. Excellent work!

New

New Verity CU blog

Old

Verity CU old blog

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mShift Leads in U.S. Mobile Banking Deployments

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Metavante, Mobile Banking, mShift

mShift is the biggest mobile banking player you've never heard of. Despite powering WAP sites for 32 U.S. financial institutions, with several in operation for more than five years (see list below), the company remains relatively unknown. I had a chance to catch up with CEO Awele Ndili and Director of Biz Development Pam Livingston at Metavante's user conference this week, where mShift demo'd its WAP services in the exhibition hall and in a private session.

San Jose-based mShift has 32 clients live, 5 banks and 27 credit unions, many deployed through mShift's relationship with online banking platform provider, Digital Insight, now a unit of Intuit. Only 5 clients have been deployed prior to 2004. More than half (19) launched in the past 12 months, with 8 launching in December 2006 alone. 

Here's a list of mShift clients and when each first deployed WAP-based mobile banking:

2000 (1 deployment)

  • Patelco CU (Sep)

2001 (2)

  • Alliance CU (Nov)
  • VisionsFCU (Dec)

2002 (2)

  • BFSFCU (Oct)
  • Golden 1 (Nov)

2004 (3)   

  • DCU (Jan)
  • XFCU (Mar)
  • Illinois National Bank (June)

2005 (3)

  • Premier America CU (April)
  • MACU (July)
  • FlagStar Bank (July)

2006 (15)

  • VyStar CU (Feb)
  • Amplify CU (Mar)
  • First Republic Bank (Aug)
  • SAFE CU (Aug)
  • Owen Com. Bank (Sep)
  • Trumark Financial CU (Oct)
  • STCU (Nov)
  • Metro CU (Dec)
  • NIHFCU (Dec) 
  • TDFCU (Dec)
  • Allegacy FCU (Dec)
  • Metro1 CU (First Metropolitan CU) (Dec)
  • Sun West FCU (Dec)
  • Heritage Com. CU (Dec)
  • SEFCU (Dec)

2007 (6)

  • CECU (Jan)
  • Mazuma CU (Jan)
  • First City Credit Union (Jan)
  • Salem Five Bank (Jan)
  • Cardinal Bank (Apr)
  • SDFCU (Apr)

In addition to the usual balance/transaction info, the mShift system can also display check images on the mobile phone display, a service we hadn't really thought would be in high demand. But at least on larger mobile devices, such as a Blackberry or Treo, the check images are very readable. As mobile browsers improve the ability to easily zoom in on selected content (for example, Apple's iPhone), the check-image display should prove popular. It's an important part of online self-service with one caveat: However cute the check-image display on today's small flip phones, they are still largely unreadable.

Update: Steve Bills at The American Banker published an article today that discusses mShift and the advantages of a so-called vendor-neutral WAP mobile service (article here).

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ING Direct Offers 1% Cashback for 60 Days

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Debit Cards, Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Email Samples, ING Direct

Email from ING Direct announcing cashback bonus I just received an email (inset) from ING Direct announcing a 1% cashback promo for its Electric Orange debit card. Not surprisingly, the rebate applies only to signature debit, where interchange fees cover the cost.

Initially I thought it was a permanent feature of the bank's new paperless checking account. But after clicking through to the landing page (see screenshot below), I discovered it's just a two-month promotion, running June 1 through July 31.

Given ING Direct's staunch consumer advocacy positioning, I am a little surprised it is not a bit more upfront about the two-month time period. Perhaps it's just an oversight, or maybe they are testing different copy treatments.

The 1% offer is also shown on the bank's main Electric Orange product page (here). Again, there is no mention that it's a promotion until you click through the "1% cashback" banner.

Analysis
Overall, it's a good promotion. A clear benefit for the customer and limited duration for the bank. And it helps build awareness that ING Direct supports debit card use at the point of sale, a relatively new feature for the direct bank. See previous coverage here.

Landing page (here)

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Update on Prosper.com Traffic Numbers

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Metrics & Market Research, Prosper

Last week we reported on the apparent traffic spike at person-to-person lender Prosper. Compete’s Snapshot showed Prosper with 1 million unique visitors in March.

Based on that observation, Compete dove into the Prosper numbers and found that the domain had not yet been added to its more rigorous monitoring system, and in fact, there appeared to be some panel bias in the original March traffic numbers. Under Compete’s revised assumptions, Prosper’s March traffic estimate is a third less, just under 700,000 visitors, instead of 1-million plus. 

Also, Compete has now released its April estimates and found that Prosper’s traffic declined 25% to 500,000 visitors. While that no longer puts Prosper at the same level as Suntrust, the lender does have considerably more visitors than the nation’s 23rd largest bank, Comerica (see revised traffic chart below, Prosper is the blue line).

Compete traffic estimates

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Virgin Money to Enter U.S. Market Through Acquisition of CircleLending

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Mortgage, Refi & Home Equity, P2P Lending, Prosper, Virgin Money, Zopa

This is a very interesting bit of news today. Virgin Group PLC, the high-flying UK-based company run by Richard Branson, says it will be using Waltham, MA-based CircleLending to enter the U.S. financial services market. Virgin's financial services are marketed under the Virgin Money brand in the UK (see screenshot below) and several other markets.

If you take a broad view, CircleLending was the first pure peer-to-peer lender in the U.S., five years before Prosper got its start (see previous coverage here). However, CircleLending has historically limited its involvement to servicing loans made between family members, not brokering the deals or vetting the applicants like Prosper and Zopa.

However, from the sounds of it, that will be changing under the new majority ownership by Virgin USA. According to Asheesh Advani, CEO/Founder of CircleLending:

"(CircleLending will be the) launching pad to brand Virgin in the U.S. in financial services"

According to the American Banker article here, the new venture's first product, sold under the Virgin name, will be a direct mortgage that blends "friends and family" funds with capital from a financial institution and/or the secondary market. They also said they will have a credit card and are looking at student loans.

It will be interesting to see how they use peer-to-peer finance in its efforts. Anthony Marino, Virgin USA's SVP Corporate Development told American Banker:

"(the CircleLending platform) provides a broad opportunity to address consumer needs, and the Virgin brand allows us to bring a unique tone of voice to the market,"

And,

"We are … building a major, Virgin-branded financial services company in the U.S."

Analysis
These are not new concepts, but with the Virgin marketing muscle behind them and the integration of peer-to-peer tools, the newcomer could carve out a significant niche in the massive U.S. mortgage lending business. The new entity could also leverage the CircleLending platform to compete directly with Prosper and Zopa in the U.S. and  importing the resulting product into the UK to compete with Zopa there.

Virgin Money UK homepage

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More Long-Term Archives at Tech CU, WaMu, and Citibank

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Electronic Statements, Tech CU, Washington Mutual

In response to my post last week about online archives (here and here), I heard from Citibank and WaMu, who both support online requests for statements going back seven years (see note 1). The statements are delivered online, free of charge, and in WaMu's case, generally within five minutes. The customer receives an email notification when the statement is available. That's slightly less convenient than real-time access, but it still provides 98% of the value (see note 2), which is quite acceptable.

But the new winner, with the longest online archives, is San Jose-based Technology CU which provides free online access to statements going back to 1993. That's 14 years and counting. Tech CU also requires an online request for the back statements, but with the archives hosted in-house, they are readable within seconds. In response to my question, SVP Michael Luckin timed the query for me, and was able to login, request and receive an older statement, and logout in 20 seconds. That ought to satisfy most members.    

Notes:

1. The Citibank archives were included in our previous summer 2005 report, but at that time we did not know of WaMu's expanded archives which became available in March 2005, but were evidently not discussed on its website when we did our research.

2. None of the statement archive systems mentioned here allow the customer to search for specific transactions or to manipulate/download the actual data. Only Whitney Bank offers seven years of searchable online data.  

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Prosper Advertising on BankRate.com

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, P2P Lending, Prosper

After posting yesterday about the apparent traffic spike at Prosper (here),* I ran across this ad this morning at BankRate.com (here). Prosper’s excellent landing page is shown at the end of the post.

Prosper ad on BankRate.com

I’ve seen Prosper advertising a bit on Google (here), but this takes the lender’s marketing to a whole new, and expensive, level. At BankRate, a site littered with 5% APY come-on’s, this orange 12% rate offer will attract a lot of attention. But given the typical acquisition costs of $100+ for advertising at BankRate, it will be tough for this to pan out from an ROI perspective. With Prosper’s 1% loan fee plus 0.5% servicing charge, it would take roughly $7,000 in lending volume per new customer to break even in the first year, if acquisition costs average $100.

But after visiting with Prosper’s founder, Chris Larsen, at the recent Net.Finance conference, I have a renewed respect for what they are doing. We’re working on a Prosper 2.0 report, as a followup to last year’s initial look at person-to-person lending (here).

Prosper landing page after clicking through the above BankRate.com banner ad

Prosper landing page from BankRate.com banner

* Compete told me they are looking closer at the data to see if there were any anomalies in the latest estimates for Prosper.com traffic. 

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Long-term Archive Update: Chase Credit Cards Provides Six Years

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Chase Bank, Credit/Debit Cards, Electronic Statements

The folks at Chase Bank were on the ball today. Less than an hour after I wrote about Whitney Bank joining the long-term statement archive club (here), I received an email from a subscriber* at Chase letting me know they offer six years of online statements for credit cards. 

Below is the bank's announcement to cardholders. It's nicely designed with a green touch. And it reminds cardholders they will receive an email both when the statement is ready and when payment is due. And note the call to action: "TRY" paperless. That lets customers know they can always go back. Now that's the way to get fired up about saving trees, and the bank's cash. The only thing missing: a simple guarantee.

Grade: We score it an "A" 

Chase has been working hard to move customers out of paper. So far this year, the bank has run a $35,000 sweeps to go paperless (see post here) and they currently have a popup on the credit card homepage pitching estatements (see screenshot below).

January 2007 email to Chase credit card customers

Email to credit card customers pitching electronic statements

Popup at credit card site

Popup pitching paperless statements at Chase's credit card page

*He earns a Starbucks card for his responsiveness. Anyone else have five or more years of statements online? Add your comments or email me.

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Prosper Traffic Spikes, Hits Major Bank Levels

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Metrics & Market Research, Prosper

Prosper homepage Preparing a table for our upcoming report on social finance, we were slogging through website traffic at Compete.com and discovered a startling statistic. In March, traffic to the person-to-person lender Prosper.com was four-fold that of January, growing to more than 1 million unique visitors. That puts it in rarefied company, approximately the same as a top-20 bank such as SunTrust, which according to Compete had just 10% more traffic in March (see chart below).

If those numbers are accurate, and they weren’t driven by unsustainable events such as a a mentions in major blogs or media, Prosper may have moved past the early adopter stage, and into the more mainstream web-based financial services arena.

It appears the traffic is converting to registered users. The last time we checked, April 25, the homepage said it had 240,000 registered users. Today, it says 270,000. That’s 12% growth in 15 days.

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