Finovate Blog

I was asked recently what it would take for me to move my business deposit relationship. My immediate answer: “There is nothing you could do to get me to move.”

We have changed banks only once in our 20-year history, moving to Washington Mutual (now Chase) in 2007 in order to get a better line of credit (which ironically, was never granted, as WaMu was about to go into a death spiral).

We’ve been happy with Chase for the most part, and now have so many services and payees connected to it, that I can’t imagine going through the headache of changing. Even if another bank or CU offered a fee-free account that matched Chase feature for feature, it’s just not worth the considerable investment in time and energy to switch.  

But a few minutes later I changed my mind. Yes, there is one thing that would make me move my entire business account. And it’s so basic that it seems ridiculous that I’d even have to ask for it.

It’s the one thing that Chase, or any bank that I know of, isn’t currently delivering to small business owners:

Guaranteed safety of our funds against all fraud/theft

Chase has state-of-the-art security as far as I can tell (e.g., two-factor authentication for all the risky moves). And we’ve never had a problem. However, every time I read about some nonprofit or small business having their account drained after a successful key-logging attack, I get that queasy feeling.

And I’m not even asking for the fraud guarantee to be free. I’d be more than willing to pay for it. How about $25/month for the first $100,000 covered, then $10 to $15 per $100,000 thereafter? That should be enough to make it a decent profit center for the bank and I could sleep better (note 1). A win-win.

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Note: 
1. Two years ago, I was encouraged by the new offering from EFTGuard (see post). They were offering coverage of $100,000 per account up to $500,000 total per customer. Insured customers were required to use fraud-monitoring software from Trusteer, Iron Key or Webroot. The price was $25/mo to the end-user with $10 of that pocketed by the bank distribution partner. But I haven’t run across any banks currently offering it.