Britton & Koontz Bank
www.bkbank.com

B & K’s Web-banking program e-mails users whenever their account goes below pre-established thresholds.

Mark White, VP at Summit Research, the architect of Britton & Koontz First National Bank’s (Natchez, MS; $150 million) innovative Web-banking service, tells us that B&K was actually the first financial institution to roll out an e-mail-based balance notification program. We reported Signet Bank as the first with the feature.

B&K’s aptly named Account Watchdogs have been in use since August 1996. Watchdog users input a single balance level and whenever their account dips below that mark an e-mail is generated. In comparison, Signet allows users to input an upper balance limit along with the lower one. B&K’s program includes one feature not present in Signet’s: it stores the date the account last dipped below the threshold.

There is no charge for Internet-based services and you can demo them yourself on the B&K Web. Note: You “apply” online for a user ID that allows you to demo the program. It only takes a few seconds.

B&K is one of just three financial institutions in the country providing Internet access. The others are Apollo Trust and PNC Bank. Internet access is priced at $9.95/mo for the first five hours, then $1.95/hr thereafter. But B&K customers with an Ultimate Checking account ($7.50/mo) pay a sharply discounted fee of $2.50/mo for the first five hours, then $1.35/hour thereafter.

Privately held Summit Research Inc.. was founded in 1989. Its original business was consulting and development for firms such as Borland (Quattro Pro spreadsheet) and Adobe (PDF printing format). Current clients include Banctec Systems and Mobil Oil. Summit is now marketing two turn-key systems: EBS 2000 which was first installed at B&K in August 1996 and Network Connector, first installed in Sept. 1995.

While B&K’s Web banking service is a bit outdated visually, the functionality is first-rate: online check images, e-mail balance notification, and the ability to select a range of transaction dates. In fact, the “online statement” functionality is more advanced that what is offered by most large financial institutions including American Express’s ExpressNet site.

A key deficiency is the lack of a downloading facility. With 35% of PC users doing household budgets on their PCs, B&K/Summit should move statements beyond HTML so that data doesn’t have to be cut and pasted, or reentered by hand, into a spreadsheet. Summit says it will be addressing those needs shortly.

Contacts: Mark A. White is VP Summit Research, Inc. mwhite@summit-research.com, 972.539.1889, W. Page Ogden is CEO at B&K, 601.445.5576.

B&K, like Security First Network Bank, features online images of canceled checks. Users even choose what size of image to view: small, medium or large and whether just the front is displayed or the front and back.