Building Blocks of Interactive Financial Services (NetBanker)

You can build a profitable online operation by focusing on one or two niche markets. But to create a superpower like Amazon.com, you’ll need to dominate one or two major mainstream financial services.

Following are 31 building blocks for developing a compelling financial services offering on the Web. The list has been divided into product-oriented “Centers” and interactive “Features.” You’ll need to integrate items from both lists to compete for the interactive consumer in the year 2000 and beyond.

Service Centers
Name		Comments
Virtual Checking/ Bill Pay		Bill pay may be the most important online banking draw you’ll have in 18 to 24 months as Microsoft, First Data, Yahoo, Visa, Checkfree, banks, and billers collectively spend $100 million or more to educate the market on the advantages of fully electronic presentment/payment. Another must-have for serious players, Virtual Checking accounts can be structured to ride on top of an existing checking account, sort of an electronic master account.
Scheduling/ Datebook		The major portals are all looking to incorporate datebook functions into their sites, but they’re not there yet. This leaves a short window of opportunity for other “essential info” companies to beat the search engines to market.
Statement/ Balance/ Transfers		Statement hosting will grow in importance as more and more financial institutions transmit statement data in standard (OFX) format.
Loans		Users should be able to access info and referrals to any type of credit product including first and second mortgages, vehicles, business financing, revolving credit, student loans, leasing, etc.
Financial Info Search		Searching for information is second only to email as the most common thing to do on the Internet, reported as an activity by 75% of U.S. adult Web users.
Service Centers
Name		Comments
Virtual Loan Servicing		Allow users to set up automatic free payments for any and all loans. Develop algorithms so that any shortfalls in monthly payments are rolled into your loan products.
Investing/ Savings		Info, links and referrals to various savings and investments available on the Web and/or from your financial institution.
Control Panel		Create a financial services control panel where users set their account preferences and establish event-triggered alerts; a powerful tool for customer retention (aka lock-in).
Customer Service		Financial institution must increasingly provide multi-channel customer service via self-service (phone/Web), Web-based intelligent forms, free-form email, telephone, and even in person.
Planning/ Budgeting		Budgeting, planning and reporting should be integrated into everything you provide on the Web. It also should have its own area.
Taxes		The Web is an ideal medium for simplifying the process of documenting and paying taxes. Not only can tax returns be submitted online, banks can store returns, and assist with monthly record keeping to make the process far simpler each April. Like just about every other function on your Web, it can be integrated with loans to become a profit center.
Small Business		With more than 10 million businesses already using the Internet, this is becoming more than a niche. And given the dissatisfaction small business owners express about their current financial services, this could be an area to pick up quick incremental profits.
Service Centers
Name	Comments
Home Financing	Focus on info, resources, and financing for first time and move-up buyers.
Refinance	Focus on first mortgage refinance and cash-out loans.
Home Improve- ments	Focus on home improvement projects and financing.
Vehicle Financing	Focus on financing cars, boats, RVs, planes. Could be broken into separate centers.
Credit card/ Payment Services	Focus on credit and debit cards, and eventually smart cards and e-cash.
Privacy/ Fraud Prevention	Users need a trusted source of info and advice about safeguarding financial activities on and off line.
Community Info	Develop helpful info/links that serve whatever community you are targeting. It could be geographically based (city, state or nation), an occupation (lawyers, undertakers), life-style (mountain climbers, singles), event-triggered (weddings, retirement), or commerce-related (online auction users, book buyers).
Company /Employment Info	Work to establish credibility online with up-to-date and informative info about your company including employment opportunities (don’t you want to do business with a company successful enough to be hiring?).
Shipping/ Tracking Center	Any useful activity that can be performed online is a candidate for your Web site. We like postage and package tracking because it’s just the kind of thing you would expect an autosimplification site to support. Electronic postage can be integrated as E-Stamp and others launch their products.
Everyday Essentials	Mundane things like the weather forecast may not attract users to your site initially, but they will help generate repeat traffic. The main reason I continue to shell out $15/mo for WebTV is that I really like being able to turn it on and see the weather forecast on its start-up page. It would be even better if it were downloaded automatically with the TV listings.

Interactive Features
Name	Comments
Integrated Rates	Show current rates at every opportunity, in calculator inputs/results, in a box in the corner of the loan center, etc.
Integrated Email	The key to making email a compelling financial feature, is to integrate it with bank services/functions such as bill payment and secure/private customer service correspondence.
Email Alerts	The online discount brokers are doing this right. Every transaction you make is confirmed with email.
Email Reminders	Draw users to your Web with reminders when CDs mature, taxes are due, it’s their brother’s birthday, etc.
Email Newsletters	Users should be able to sign up for free email newsletters in subjects of interest such as savings for retirement, home improvements, etc.
Auto-simplification Services	This is the future of the non-entertainment portion of the Web; automating and simplifying mundane off-line activities so users can spend more time in pursuit of leisure, knowledge, income, and so on.
Overdraft Protection	In-house checking accounts will be bundled with overdraft protection.
Feedback Loops	Encourage users to let you know how to improve your business. At a minimum, provide a place for users to leave feedback. It could even become a profit center if you decide to sell aggregated results to other financial institutions.
Chat with Customer Service	Users should be able to get real-time support from service and sales reps via online chat.