Last week I talked about how USAA is making the mobile experience better than online thanks to the magic of mobile remote deposit and PIN-based login. For the sake of discussion, I'm defining magic as anything you could not have imagined doing on your mobile phone two years ago (note 1).

The latest novel financial app: State Farm's Steer Clear program that provides auto insurance discounts "up to 15%" for new drivers (under age 25) that pass its safe driving program. Users can undergo the self-assessment program online or off, but the app makes it easier and with a built-in stopwatch (screenshot below) to track the required 20 practice drives. See how it works in the company's video below (press release here; iTunes link here). 

As much as I like it, the State Farm app doesn't quite make it into the magical category. Had it used GPS to automatically track the 20 practice drives, it might have passed the bar. I'm sure that's in a future version.

Regardless, it's clever, unique and positions the company well with the youth market and their parents that often foot the insurance bills. That's a good return on the small investment needed to port the program over to a mobile app (note 2).

Notes:
1. I am using two years, since that predates the opening of the iPhone App Store in July 2008.
2. Read more about the strategic advantages mobile banking can give your financial institution in our latest Online Banking Report published today.

In November, we predicted that large financial institutions would each offer dozens of mobile apps targeted to various lines of business and/or customer segments (previous post). PNC Bank, Wells Fargo and Chase each have two apps in the iPhone store.

Three weeks ago, a fourth financial company added its second app: Nationwide Insurance.

The company originally launched an app (inset) geared towards its insurance customers in April 2009 (press release; iTunes store link). This app is designed to assist its insurance customers when they have an accident. The most recent version includes a toolkit, auto claim form, agent finder and even a flashlight.

Then in mid-December, the company released a second app geared towards automobile shoppers, Cartopia (screenshots below; iTunes link; press release). It helps buyers research prospective cars on the go.

By inputting a vehicle identification number (VIN), consumers can quickly access the following info on a prospective vehicle:

• Car specs (fuel economy, dimensions, weight, etc.)
• Average retail and wholesale prices
• 5-year cost-of-ownership estimates
• Original warranty info
• Safety info
• History of the VIN number, powered by Experian's AutoCheck (similar to Carfax report; limited to six free lookups each month; note 1)

In addition, users can calculate monthly loan payments with a built-in loan calculator. Nationwide also provides links for customers to call in to apply for vehicle financing and or receive an insurance quote. Unfortunately, there is no online loan application or insurance price quote engine.

Finally, the app contains space to keep notes and rate the cars you are considering purchasing.

Relevance to Netbankers: If you are in the auto loan and/or insurance business, getting your name in front of car buyers as they shop is the ultimate marketing coup. While you may not be able to emulate all the functions in Nationwide's app (note 2), even a simple loan calculator and note-taking area, along with links to your call center, could drive incremental business.

                                                                                    Cartopia #2 Main Loan info with link to
     Cartopia #1: Splash screen                          insurance quote (via voice call)

Notes:
1. I was unable to access the report on my test vehicle; the error message said it was temporarily unavailable.
2. Although the app is loaded with features, its UI is a bit clunky and the app is only rated two stars in Apple's App Store. Consequently, a slimmed down, simpler app, would appeal to many users.  
3. For more info on financial services opportunities on the iPhone, see our March Online Banking Report.

I heard from a new company last week that has created a service to help life insurance and bank-account holders to notify beneficiaries periodically that they are named on the account. According to FindYourPolicy.com (see screenshot below), $1 billion in insurance policies go unclaimed each year due to unknown or lost beneficiaries. Although it sounds simple, tracking down beneficiaries can be a timely and expensive process. Outsourcing some or all of that is an appealing idea.

However, as a consumer-direct service, I don't think FindYourPolicy.com will get a lot of traction. The list price of $29.95 plus $3.95 per month is a lot for twice-yearly postcards (see note 1) to your beneficiaries. But the company is likely more interested in setting a high retail "value" on the service so they can wholesale it to financial institutions for pennies on the dollar.

Using the same concept for safe deposit boxes
While the beneficiary notification is an idea deserving of a second look, I was more intrigued with another of its features, safe deposit documentation and notification service. I just spent 30 minutes last Friday making a trip to the bank to look in my safe deposit to see if my son's social security card was there (note 2). Of course, it wasn't. I could have saved the trip if I'd had good records on its contents. I'm sure I wrote it down somewhere, but it would likely take much longer than 30 minutes to find it.

Ideas to help memory-challenged customers like myself:

• Simplest: It would be great if my bank had a simple email-like software app available near the safe-deposit area where I could list the contents of the box and then email the info to myself AND store a record of that communication within online banking so I could access it years from now when the email is long lost.
• Harder: In addition to manually entering info, have a scanner available so that I can scan copies of the documents in the safe deposit box for a digital record.
• Hardest: Extend the service to the home/office and allow me either to store items virtually, using my home/office scanner, or by uploading/emailing documents into the virtual safe-deposit box. This is the core idea behind vSafe from Wells Fargo.

However, as Tripp Johnson at Gonzobanker so eloquently laid out in this article, there are  serious questions regarding overall demand for virtual safe-deposit services, not to mention pesky compliance issues that cannot be ignored.  

FindYourPolicy.com homepage (29 May 2008; see note 3)

Note:

1. Why TWICE yearly? Once per year seems like plenty. Or how about one postcard and one email message each year? (Update 1 June: The reason for mailing 2x per year is that the U.S. Postal Service forwards mail only for six months, so with this frequency the company ensures it gets the forwarding address. (See comment #2 from Michael Hartmann of FindYourPolicy.com) 

2. My bank is requiring a faxed copy of my 18-year-old son's social security card in order to add him to my account. I'm all for good authentication (who isn't?), but that seems extreme. More on that in a future post. 

3. Sometime during the past 10 days, FindYourPolicy.com added the "member of American Bankers Association" seal. It's a reasonable touch, but it only means they've paid at least $1,250 for a service membership to the ABA.

Personalization of the subject line is less common in financial services marketing. Although the technique doesn't guarantee a response lift, it's a good variable to test (note 1).

InsWeb encourages customers to review their insurance coverage every six months with an eight-minute survey that begins within the body of the email.

The company creates interest by claiming a $301 average savings on a six-month policy. If accurate, it's a great ROI on the eight minutes required to complete the online form. It would be interesting to see a bank or credit union use this technique to market other financial services, such as deposits or home equity loans.

Email Characteristics

Date: Mon. 8 Oct, 2007

Time: 3:02 PM Pacific

Subject: Bruene Auto Insurance Review

From: InsWeb Customer Care InsWeb@mailer.insweb.com

To: jim@netbanker.com

Personalization: Subject line

Full Message

 Landing Page 

Note:

1. See our Online Banking Report on Email Marketing.

Over the years, many of our pet peeves, such as lack of email messaging, have either been resolved, or are on their way to being fixed.

Here are some of the rants that have appeared in the pages of Online Banking Report during the past 10 years:

• Failure to use email for account-related messaging
• Too easy to login to someone else's account
• Loan applications that were too cumbersome
• Bill payment that was too slow and confusing
• Lack of interbank transfer functionality

However, there is one issue that few have tackled; something we call open lending, or acting more like a mortgage broker than a lender. An open lender would give customers the option of seeing competitive lending products while researching loan options at your site.

IndyMac <indymac.com> is the only major lender we've seen embrace this idea, earning an OBR Best of the Web in 2001 (OBR 73). Another company that uses this technique in its online and offline advertising is Progressive Insurance <progressive.com>.

On its homepage, Progressive runs a near-real-time scrolling box with actual price comparisons for recent customers (see inset). It is even brave enough to show comparisons where they are NOT the lowest price. Note in the inset that GEICO comes in $36 less that Progressive; but if you watch the ticker continue to scroll, you will see a half-dozen companies with higher rates.

Why would a financial services company actually HELP its customers find a better deal elsewhere? Because in service industries, it's not ALL about the price. Do you want to stay at the motel with the lowest price in the city? Do you want to be operated on by the doctor with the lowest bid? Do you want to buy insurance from a fly-by-night discounter?

No customers want a good VALUE from a company they TRUST. And what better way to demonstrate both by allowing customers to easily compare your prices with others. Many of them are going to do it anyway. Why let them off your site to do the research? Let them stay at a site they trust, help them convince themselves you offer acceptable value, the close the sale with a super-convenient application.

In Online Banking Report #125, due out in a few days, we'll look at the pros and cons of open lending. Then in Part 2, scheduled to be published by year-end, we'll take a closer look at Progressive's comparative quote process in detail and build an open lending system that could be used by a bank or lender to deliver similar results.

In the meantime, if you'd like to look at our notes on Progressive's innovative quote process, download the Word doc here.

Now that financial institutions are interacting with a substantial portion of their customer base online, it becomes feasible to cross-sell niche products that don't necessarily have broad appeal.

One relatively untapped area is insurance, especially products outside the highly competitive term life and auto market. For example, in today's Wall Street Journal Family Finance column, Jennifer Saranow discussed new all-in-one insurance policies combining auto and homeowner coverage.

Other possible insurance offerings that might interest your online customers:

• Small business coverage
• Umbrella liability
• Combination credit insurance that covers multiple loans and revolving balances under one policy
• Bill insurance that would pay all previously scheduled bills for a defined period

Analysis
As any insurance sales rep can tell you, it takes time to build an insurance clientele, but once built it can be quite lucrative.

For example, if you could sell a new policy to just 1% of your online banking customers each year, by the end of 10 years you'd have 10% penetration (ignoring attrition for the sake of simplicity).

If you had 25,000 online banking subscribers and you earned $100 per year per customer on insurance, by the end of the decade you would be earning $250,000 per year from your online insurance business.

While that may not be a huge number, if you put together a half-dozen niche-product cross sales programs, you could soon be earning $1 million or more per year; money you wouldn't have had without the online channel.

We'll get back to this issue in future articles.

--JB

Similar to electronic bill payment, online distribution of insurance has a promising future, but results so far have been disappointing, especially to investors. Witness the slide in share price at popular provider: InsWeb, whose stock has fallen from its July 1999 peak of $44/share to the $2.50/share (5/31/00). But also like electronic bill payment, the economic advantage of Web-based delivery make online insurance a sure winner. What we don’t know is whether it will be a few years or a few decades for it to take hold (Table 3).

Table 1

unique monthly visitors (thousands)

Source: PC Data Online www.pcdataonline.com ; Gomez Advisors Spring 2000 Insurance Scorecard; rank among 56 providers, www.Gomez.com ; 5/00 n.r.=not rated.

Table 2

application volume

Source: Piper Jaffray, 4/00

Table 3

$ in millions

Source: Forrester Research, 1999

*In comparison, total industry premiums were approximately $700 billion in 1999

Hughes Air Employees Credit Union
www.paymaster.org

HAECU was the first to offer online insurance quotes a year ago at www.paymaster.org/cusoins.html.

Hughes Air Employees Credit Union (Manhattan Beach, CA; $1.7 billion) was the first financial institution in the U.S. to offer real-time life insurance quotes on the Web beginning in mid-1996. Its service provider is QuickQuote, which private brands the service for a number of financial institutions including First Chicago www.quickquote.com/fcnb, Lombard/Discover Brokerage www.quickqoute.com/lombard and Security First Network Bank www.quickqoute.com/sfnb.

Contact: Jan Cole is VP Alternative Delivery Systems at HAECU, 310.643.5558, janc@paymaster.org. Daniel Wager is CEO QuickQuotes in Incline Village, NV, danw@quickqoute.com.

A few value-added online ideas for insurance:

Web-based services:

• insurance needs assessment with stored input/output
• set parameters for automatic deduction of premiums
• insurance needs assessment module

E-mail/push services:

• recommended changes in insurance coverage to match changing user profile
• notification of annual needs assessment review
• notification of changes in premium amount
• confirmation of premium payment received
• notice of premium payment due
• notification of late premium payment