ING Direct Archives - Page 4 of 6

ING Launches Retirement Calculator: INGyournumber.com

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 17, 2008
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, ING Direct

Last week, ING Group's U.S. unit (note 1) made a splash with two major promotional efforts:

Sponsored free access to the Wall St Journal online for an entire day (see screenshot below).
Launched a TV advertising campaign, INGyournumber.com, aimed at the retirement market (press release here, view the spots here). Update 18 March: The company ran a full-page ad for the program in today's Wall Street Journal (p. A7)

INGyournumber <ingyournumber.com> is remarkably similar to Wells Fargo's Retire Secure Index that we looked at last week (here). The financial services giant created a special site with a Flash-based tool designed to help you find your "number." That is, the total amount you need to save to provide your desired level of retirement income.

Financial institutions should draft behind these well-funded efforts, and make sure your retirement tools are prominently positioned within your website.

ING Took Over The Wall Street Journal Online last Thursday (13 March)

INGyournumber.com Microsite

Note:

1. These promotional efforts from the main ING group, not ING Direct; although the direct banking arm did receive a small link on the bottom of the screen.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

ING Direct’s $60,000 Sweeps for Automatic Savings Plans

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 20, 2008
Categories: Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, ING Direct

ING Direct, renowned for its many contests that have created strong brand-buzz, is offering customers the chance to win one of five monthly $1,000 prizes. Any user with a new or existing automatic monthly deposit of at least $100 is entered into the sweepstakes. In addition to the monthly prizes, one grand prize winner will take home $30,000. The contest runs for six months, so the total payout is $60,000.

Low-cost incentives to encourage automated savings are a win-win (see note 1). The bank gets a stable flow of deposits to its savings products, and customers end up "paying themselves first" and developing a savings habit. We recently covered WaMu and Wachovia's efforts in this area (here).

ING Direct Transfer Money area within online banking (logged in)

Same area showing second part of animated banner

Note:

1. Unfortunately, the sweeps ended up costing me $700, although it went to a good cause. Since I'm a sucker for a contest, and I didn't have an eligible auto-debit, I went to the bank's Transfer Money page to set up a new one. In the process, I noticed that the auto debit for our son's allowance had ceased working in mid-2005 (note 2). We owed him 31 months of allowance plus interest. Ouch. After taxes, the $1k in prize money will just about get me to breakeven.

2. The allowance transfer originates from another ING Direct account, which was likely out of funds in July 2005, so the transfer was canceled. It's up to the customer to reinstate the transfer, which evidently I never did.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Scrooge Runs Bank Marketing at Most Large U.S. Banks

By Jim Bruene Posted on December 24, 2007
Categories: ING Direct, Prepaid/gift cards, Website Usability & Design, Wells Fargo

In our annual Christmas/New Years survey of bank websites (note 1), we once again find little use of holiday themes, especially among the very largest. Scrooge would be pleased with the homepages of the top four: Citi, BofA, Wachovia, and Chase which have no holiday images or messages.

Wells Fargo is the only top-5 bank with a holiday message. The bank wishes its customers Happy Holidays (see below) in a top-of-the-page banner rotating with two other messages: a savings promotion that also uses holiday imagery (below) and an investments banner (not shown).

However, this year there is one top-20 bank fully embracing the holiday spirit. ING Direct homepage (screenshot above, download flash in note 2, below) features a full-screen animation that first strings Happy Holidays across the page followed by the ING Direct orange ball rolling across the screen, bumping into the tree trunk, and dumping a load of snow on top. It's very well done.

Also, honorable mentions to:

Fifth Third and its $10,000 holiday sweeps
Regions Bank, which is running a Toys for Tots banner across the top
PNC with its annual tongue-in-cheek Christmas Price Index

Additionally, WaMu and Key Bank use winter imagery. And HSBC, US Bank, SunTrust, BB&T and Citizens are all running small banners for prepaid gift cards.

Wells Fargo

Fifth Third

Regions

PNC WaMu

Key Bank

HSBC SunTrust US Bank

Citizens Bank

BB&T

Note:

1. Websites observed at 9 AM Pacific Time, Dec. 24, from a Seattle IP address.

2. View the ING Direct holiday animation (here)

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

ING Direct to Acquire Sharebuilder

By Jim Bruene Posted on November 7, 2007
Categories: Direct Banking, ING Direct, Investment Products

ING Direct will spend $220 million in cash to buy Sharebuilder, a unique Bellevue, WA-based discount brokerage, with upwards of 2 million accounts across 660,000 customers (see previous coverage here). The deal was first reported in the Seattle PI last week (here) and confirmed yesterday (here).

At an acquisition cost of about $100 per account or $300 per customer, it seems workable at face value. However, both Sharebuilder and ING Direct’s core businesses have historically been relatively low margin, so it will take good execution to make the acquisition pay off.

Many (most??) of Sharebuilder’s accounts have come through co-branded programs with 40 banks and 140 credit unions including National City Bank and Boeing Employees Credit Union. It’s biggest brand name partner is Wells Fargo (see co-branded holiday promotional email from 2002 below), which not coincidentally, is also an investor in the company. It will be interesting to see if the company’s financial institution partners will continue to promote Sharebuilder accounts now that it’s a division of ING Direct.

ING Direct has offered a small assortment of mutual funds to its customers for years (product page here), but they have not been widely promoted. With the Sharebuilder product, ING Direct will have another tactic to fend off the fierce online competition for high-rate deposits.

Update (8 Nov 2007): comScore released interesting traffic data on the two companies today. In Sep 2007, ING Direct had 2.0 million unique users and Sharebuilder had 1.1 million and there was only a small overlap of approximately 100,000 users. So the combined entity would have an estimated 3.0 million uniques. However, most of the overlap represents customers of both companies. comScore data shows that 8.4% of Sharebuilder logins in Sep. also logged in to ING Direct that month. That means 50,000 to 60,000 Sharebuilder customers are already ING Direct customers, meaning the net account pickup is closer to 600,000.

Wells Fargo/Sharebuilder email from 2002 (received 16 Dec 2002)

Wells Fargo Sharebuilder email

Wells Fargo co-branded Sharebuilder new account application (7 Nov 2007):

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

NetBank Falls But Don’t Blame Online Delivery

By Jim Bruene Posted on October 1, 2007
Categories: Direct Banking, ING Direct, NetBank

I was flying to New York Saturday morning when I read the news in The Wall Street Journal that NetBank had gone under, the largest bank failure in 14 years (note 1). While the WSJ headline, NetBank Failure Shows Online Limits, implied that online delivery shared some of the blame, NetBank's downfall was primarily from poorly underwritten loans, both prime and sub-prime, and most of those originations came the old-fashioned way, through face-to-face mortgage broker sales.

Over the years I've been acquainted with a number of NetBank employees and have written extensively about their innovations since their launch in 1996, as the second Internet-only brand. Interestingly, the three major U.S. Internet-only brands launched in 1995, 1996 and 1997 are gone: the first Internet-only bank, Security First Network Bank was sold to Centura (owned by RBC) and Compubank was sold to NetBank.

But no matter what the reason, a failure of one of the key names in U.S. online banking certainly gives the industry a black eye. My hope is that a forward-thinking bank buys the NetBank brand from the government and relaunches it with much fanfare next year. Sure, there's some negative brand equity this year, but the NetBank name is a classic and shouldn't go to waste (note 2).

ING Direct, which now lays claim to the retail deposits (note 1), has taken over the NetBank hompage for now (see screenshot below):

For more information:

FDIC info on the closure here
NetBank timeline from the Atlanta Journal Constitution here
It takes a failure for a bank to make TechCrunch here
American Banker's good summary of the failure, complete with quotes from federal regulators, here

Notes:

1. The company was taken over by federal regulators, who will sell off the assets and return all deposits up to the $100,000 insurance limit. About $1.5 billion in retail deposits, and 102,000 customer accounts, have been purchased by ING Direct. The estimated $110 million shortfall will be covered by the deposit-insurance reserves funded by premiums levied to all banks. The failure does not have direct cost to taxpayers.

2. We said the same thing about NextCard in 2001, but no one followed our suggestion. Now the most well-known website and brand of the most prolific advertiser in the late 1990s has been reduced to a link farm collecting rent from Google Adsense.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

ING Direct Launching in Seattle

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 7, 2007
Categories: Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Direct Mail, ING Direct

I received a mailer yesterday at my Seattle home address announcing ING Direct's upcoming launch in Seattle (see scan below). This version at least was sent only to existing ING Direct customers. Note the inside headline with an appropriate local touch, "Seattle's Getting More Bean for its Buck."

There are not many specifics in the orange self-mailer, other than "You'll soon be seeing us all over the city—from Puget Sound to Lake Washington— spreading the savings message." I'll keep my camera handy to capture big orange visuals as the company arrives on the scene.

So, it doesn't sound as if we're getting a famous ING Cafe (see inset, the newest one in Chicago). However, I do have the opportunity to earn a $10 referral bonus by handing out the two detachable cards that came with the mailer (see note 1). The new account holder also earns a $25 bonus. Customers can sign up through the mail using the card, or go online to a special landing page <ingdirect.com/seattle> (see screenshot below).

Seattle mailer front

Seattle mailer back

Landing page for Seattle offer <ingdirect.com/seattle>

Note:

1. On the above scan, you can only see the top portion of one of two identical perforated referral cards designed to be given to family and friends. Sorry, my 8.5 x 14 scanner didn't capture the entire self-mailer.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Compete’s May Online Financial Shopping Scorecard

By Jim Bruene Posted on July 12, 2007
Categories: Bank of America, Compete, ING Direct, Metrics & Market Research

Last month, we introduced the Financial Services Monthly Performance scorecard produced by Compete. Here's the second installment, summarizing the overall performance of 23 large U.S. financial institutions and lead-generation sites. For more information, including the detailed methodology and companies tracked, refer to that post (here).

The highlights:

Financial shopping was down or flat in most categories, especially savings accounts; not surprising given the typical tax-time spike in April.
The main exception to the trend was checking, which grew a phenomenal 31% in May compared to April.
The main drivers of checking account growth: Bank of America's promotion of free MyAccess Checking (see coverage here) and, to a lesser extent, Wachovia, whose Google/MSN marketing caused a major spike in traffic
But it wasn't all rosy in checking accounts: While BofA was experiencing 25% growth in applications, ING Direct went through a typical post-launch downturn with a 50% decline in application volume
Credit card conversions were up dramatically, with a 5% increase in application volume despite a 6% drop in shoppers, resulting in a 22% conversion ratio (see note 1)

Note:

1. Compete revised its card applications show in the previous report. The revised number of card applications:
March 2007: 1.57 million instead of 1.71 million
April: 1.70 million instead of 1.88 million with 8% growth instead of 9%

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Mobile Banking from ING Direct

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 25, 2007
Categories: ING Direct, Mobile Banking

(Originally published at NetBanker.com)

The latest entry in the WAP camp is ING Direct, which recently began delivering Electric Orange checking account data to mobile phones at <ingdirect.com/m>. The "m" may become a trendy indicator for WAP sites, although most have put it in front of the URL, e.g., <m.google.com>, <m.yahoo.com>. The idea is to have as few keystrokes as possible without requiring a new URL to be memorized.

How it Works
I used my new Samsung Blackjack with Windows Mobile to access ING Direct's Mobile Orange and almost made it into my account. The /m URL takes you directly to the login page where ING Direct uses the same two-factor Passmark/RSA-powered login on my Windows Mobile device as it does on a desktop browser.

In my test, I was able to enter my customer number, although it took a while before I realized I had to "double click" on the Enter button. Then I correctly answered the two security questions after several tries, and my personal picture and phrase were displayed. But I could go no further. ING Direct would not accept my PIN, which worked fine on the desktop moments earlier.

There are several explanations for my problem. It's possible that the bank wouldn't let me in because my desktop session was still active (doubtful). Or ING Direct may have mistakenly kept me out (doubtful). Or it could have been user error (likely).

Although, I used the correct PIN number, because of the limitations of my Blackjack, it's difficult to know whether you are typing numbers or letters from the keypad since they are asterisked out in the ING Direct input box on screen. I tried it with and without NUM LOCK pressed; then with SHIFT, then with FUNCTION. Anyway, I was locked out after five or six attempts, and now I can't get in from the desktop or mobile. Hopefully, it will automatically reset tomorrow so I can avoid a phone call to customer service.

Analysis
The reason I bored you with the details of my failed login is that it points out the serious usability issues with mobile banking. Delivering services to tiny screens with tiny keypads that may or may not have dedicated alpha and/or number keys makes the entire experience much less enjoyable. And it will create a new category of support call to customer service. These drawbacks will be fixed in time, but they will be a drag on adoption in the short term.

For more information on mobile banking, see our full report at Online Banking Report here.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

ING Direct Adds Mobile Banking

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 24, 2007
Categories: ING Direct, Mobile Banking

The latest entry in the WAP camp is ING Direct, which recently began delivering Electric Orange checking account data to mobile phones at <ingdirect.com/m>. The "m" may become a trendy indicator for WAP sites, although most have put it in front of the URL, eg. <m.google.com>, <m.yahoo.com>. The idea is to have as few keystrokes as possible without requiring a new URL to be memorized.

How it Works
I used my new Samsung Blackjack with Windows Mobile to access ING Direct's Mobile Orange and almost made it in to my account. The /m URL takes you directly to the login page where ING Direct uses the same two-factor Passmark/RSA-powered login on my Windows Mobile device as it does on a desktop browser.

In my test, I was able to successfully enter my customer number, although it took a while before I realized I had to "double click" on the Enter button. Then I correctly answered the two security questions after several tries and my personal picture and phrase were displayed. But I could go no further. ING Direct would not accept my PIN, which worked fine on the desktop moments earlier.

Although, I used the correct PIN number, because of the limitations of my Blackjack, it's difficult to know whether you are typing numbers or letters from the keypad since they are asterisked out in the ING Direct input box on screen. I tried it with and without NUM LOCK pressed; then with SHIFT, then with FUNCTION. Anyway, I was locked out after 5 or 6 attempts, and now I can't get in from the desktop or mobile. Hopefully, it will automatically reset tomorrow so I can avoid a phone call to customer service.

For more information on mobile banking, see our full report at Online Banking Report here.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

ING Direct Offers 1% Cashback for 60 Days

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 17, 2007
Categories: Debit Cards, Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Email Samples, ING Direct

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)

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

ING Direct Adds 220,000 Accounts in Fourth Quarter

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 27, 2007
Categories: Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Direct Banking, ING Direct, Market Research & Metrics

The FDIC database has been updated with Q4 numbers, allowing all the data miners to slap on their hard hats and get to work. Since reporting on the tepid third quarter of ING Direct (U.S.) (here), we've been looking forward to the year-end data.

The biggest surprise is that the bank not only reversed the Q3 account run-off, it managed to add 220,000 new accounts, its best fourth quarter ever. However, things weren't so rosy in terms of deposit balances, which increased just $800 million, the lowest Q4 increase since 2001 when the bank had less than $3 billion in total deposits.

For the full year, ING added $7.2 billion in deposit for an 18% increase, the first time the bank had less than 40% year-over-year growth. And almost the entire increase came in first quarter. The bank essentially had no deposit growth in the final nine months of the year (see table below).

It will be interesting to see what impact its new high-rate Electric Orange checking account will have on deposit and account growth. The account was growing rapidly during the final stretch of the invitation-only launch period, growing from $1 billion on deposit Dec. 31, to $2.2 billion by mid-February (see coverage here).

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Futuristic Friday: Banks in Second Life

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 10, 2007
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, ING Direct, Second Life

Second Life, the alternate reality with four million members worldwide, has a surprising driver, capitalism. According to Second Life Insider, US$1.5 million changed hands yesterday (link here). And if there's money changing hands, there are opportunities for banks and financial scammers (not necessarily in that order).

In a March 6 search, Second Life Insider found ten banks operating in Second Life (SL) (post here). Several operate only in Second Life, raising numerous questions about the legitimacy of these non-regulated entities.

But what most interests us are the six real-world banks that have set up shop in Second Life such as ING's Virtual Holland (see inset above and screenshot below).

Here's a banks in Second Life timeline:

Sep. 2005: Wells Fargo is the first real-world bank with a presence in Second Life (SL)
Dec. 2005: Wells Fargo leaves SL, moving its Stagecoach Island to a new platform (see previous coverage here)
7 Dec 2006: ABN Amro becomes first European bank in SL (press release here)
7 Jan 2007: BNP Paribas opens a small test area (post here)
7 Feb 2007: Swiss bank BCV opens its doors in SL (press release here)
21 Feb 2007: ING Bank launches website and blog to get users involved in building what it calls Our Virtual Holland <ourvirtualholland.nl>
2 Mar 2007: Danish Saxo Bank announces plans to create trading platform in SL (Reuters article here)

Analysis
It's hard to predict whether banking will ultimately become a transactional business in Second Life or other virtual realities (note 1). However, with four million registered users and an inordinate amount of press attention, leveraging a Second Life presence for marketing purposes looks to be a winner.

But if you are going into SL, make sure you mirror the effort with a Web presence that lets the other 1 billion Internet users see what you are up to. And there is no one doing that better than ING, who's taken a Zen approach to its SL strategy. They've made the process of building a SL presence more important than the actual result. Their Web 2.0-inspired website ourvirtualholland.nl involves the community with blogs, suggestions, and an email list (see screenshot below).

Note

1. For the record, we believe that full banking capabilities, including transactions, lending, currency exchange, will eventually be conducted in virtual communities such as Second Life. Whether it will ever be more than just a niche play, is unknown.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook