"The biggest profit center at banks is customer ignorance, which banks have mistaken for customer loyalty."
-- Gary Hamel, speaking to 1,000+ bankers at BAI's Retail Delivery Conference, Nov. 15, 2006

I've always been a sucker for management-guru speakers. I can still remember Tom Peters speaking at a sold-out show in Peoria, Illinois, back when I was a wet-behind-the-ears management-trainee for Caterpillar. It was 20 years ago during the height of "In Search of Excellence" mania and it helped me realize a lot can be done to improve business performance.

So every year I make it a point to sit up front when BAI trots out the guru-du-jour to inspire the banking crowd. This year, it was Gary Hamel, a Harvard guy that, I'm sorry to say, I hadn't heard of prior to Wednesday (see the End Note for a summary of his recommendations presented to the BAI crowd).

But man did he grab my attention with his challenge to the assembled bankers and tech-company reps (see quote above). He believes banks are vulnerable as customers become better equipped to compare the price of various financial services, a natural role of the Internet.

The importance of switching tools
Hamel believes financial services loyalty will disappear once customers discover how easy it is to move their accounts to pick up a hundred basis points on their savings rate, or avoid $35 overdraft fees.

In his BAI presentation, Hamel pointed to U.K.-based uSwitch <uswitch.com> as an example of a new tool to help financial customers compare and switch banking accounts (we'll profile it in an upcoming article).

As Hamel was delivering his keynote, Intuit was busy in a nearby Mandalay Bay eatery briefing analysts on its new account switching service, scheduled to go live December 15. The clever service is built on the Teknowledge aggregation engine acquired last year (data sheet here). Intuit's service is similar to Yodlee's service announced in September (see our coverage here). We'll be covering it in more detail as it goes live. 

End Note:

Hamel's management philosophy
I have yet to read Hamel's books, but what he talked about Wednesday could be boiled down to the following:

• Employees shouldn't be "managed" they should be "led."
• In practice, he'd like to see nearly all management eliminated and replaced by small, self-managed teams working to achieve company goals.
• As much as possible, teams would make their own product, pricing, and staffing decisions.
• Compensation would be highly dependent on the team's results in achieving the ambitious profit goals set for them by the company.
• His examples: Whole Foods, W.L. Gore, and Google.      

This week Yodlee announced its new Bill Pay Account Accelerator, a bill-pay-switching tool designed to help banks attract active users of competitive bill payment services. Not only does Yodlee's wizard move payee information, it also can cancel and move previously scheduled payments, including recurring ones.

The service will be piloted in fourth quarter and launched in early 2007.

Analysis
If it works, it could reduce the "retention benefits" of electronic bill pay by making it easier to switch banks. The American Banker article reporting the new service hit hard on that aspect. However, we think the concern is overblown. It's not that time-consuming for most people to move their payee information, requiring 10 or 15 minutes of "cutting and pasting" or "scribbling and retyping," then a few more minutes to reschedule upcoming payments.

What's MUCH harder for the user is making sure outstanding paper checks have cleared and, more importantly, unwinding preauthorized debits such as important insurance and loan payments. Those require contacting the payee directly and hoping that your instructions to change the debit are processed in a timely fashion.

But the biggest issue is motivating users to make a checking account switch in the first place. And that's where Yodlee solution could provide a big boost, offering the perception of radically simplifying the switchover. And if Yodlee expands the tool to also transfer the entire account history, not just the bill pay history, it could become an important industry tool.

Since it doesn't ship until next year, we'll refrain from superlatives until we've had a chance to test it. But Yodlee has a good track record in hooking accounts together, and we expect the new service to be functional. However, whether banks will adopt it is another matter. It will have to be drop-dead simple to use or banks will not want the ensuing customer-service nightmare.

AmSouth Bank has posted a new "special offer" on its home page. The bank's "Click to Switch" program promises, "The fast online way to tell your bank it's over."

Clicking on the graphic leads to a page with some advice for switching checking accounts. It's the usual laundry list of advice, none of which is really helped by the online connection. There is one useful link for changing the direct deposit of social security benefits. Though, that is likely to be of little use to most online users contemplating a switch to AmSouth Bank.

We like what AmSouth is doing, we just wish there was more meat in the offer.