According to the Wall Street Journal, scooter sales in the U.S. are up 25% compared to last year (article here). While still relatively rare in U.S. cities, I have a feeling that 10 years from now, after a steady diet of $5/gal gas, American cities will look more like their European counterparts, with scooters zipping about everywhere.

For banks or credit unions, this might be the ideal time to jump on the scooter bandwagon by helping customers buy the energy-efficient vehicles. Not only would it be great way to grab a little PR boost during the slow summer news cycle, with some models selling for $4,000 or more, you could boost vehicle loan outstandings by a measurable amount.

A brief Google search located two financial institutions pushing scooter loans, both appropriately with "green" in their name: South Burlington, VT-based Green Mountain Credit Union and Neenah, WI-based Evergreen Credit Union (see screenshots below).

Evergreen is promoting a special one-day 3.99% scooter loan on its homepage (see screenshot below and note 1). The Saturday morning event, conducted in partnership with a local scooter dealer, included test rides, free hot dogs, and prize drawings. The CU also gave away a scooter earlier this month as part of its 50th anniversary special.

Benefits/Opportunities

• Incremental loan originations: If you are a good relationship lender, the $4,000 scooter loan today could lead to many $25,000 car loans in the future. 
• Search-engine marketing: Currently, there are no direct ads running on the keywords "scooter loans," although you will compete with several advertisers displaying against the generic "loan" in the search term. There are also few organic results for the term, so there's a good chance an SEO optimized landing page would rate highly in Google results.
• Leverage branch parking: One of the problems with urban scooter use is lack of available parking. Branches with parking could turn over one or more spaces for customers with scooters, creating good will, as well as the occasional picture on the 5 PM news.
• Public relations: Anything that saves gas makes for a good story this summer and beyond. It can also be pitched as a "green banking" story, although it's not a pure environmental win. The gas savings are easy to see, but scooter emissions can be significantly more than for the automobiles they replace.
• Starter loan/credit: If you can convince your underwriting staff to accept applicants with limited or no credit history, the scooter loan could be a great way for young adults to build a credit file and improve their credit score (thanks Andrea for the idea)
• Customer acquisition: Scooter loans could be a great way to introduce younger consumers to your financial institution.
• Trendy icon: At least for urban customers, the scooter, especially the classic Vespa look, makes for an attractive graphical image, conjuring up memories of trips to Italy, or at least movies shot on location there. Your scooter program could make for good website content, eye-catching outdoor (great bus ad!), and or a nice flourish for other media efforts.
• Strike a deal with Scooter Financial: The number one result at Google for "scooter loans" is Scooter Financial, which does exactly what you'd expect, make loans to buy scooters. Given their name and Google pagerank, they could be an ideal company to partner with.

Cons/Potential Problems

• It's an asset easily hid from the repossession agent, so it's harder to use the threat of repossession to enforce the outstanding debt. 
• The accidental death rate for scooter owners is about 65% higher than that for cars; so you might want to be careful how much you push it as an "automobile alternative." But the news isn't all bad; scooter owners are much less likely to perish than motorcycle owners. 
• Most gas-powered scooters release significantly more pollutants than most automobiles.
• The smaller loan sizes may lead to little, if any, profits.
• Not a big market overall.
  

Evergreen Credit Union homepage promotes Saturday "scooter loan" special (21 May 2008)

Green Mountain Credit Union homepage promotes 6.49% scooter loans
(21 May 2008)

Note:

1. Unfortunately, the Evergreen special was this PAST Saturday.

Instead of giving yet another gift card, how about making a difference for someone 5,000 miles away?  The biggest online microfinance lender, Kiva, with $12 million loaned to date, offers gift certificates (here) as does Danish microfinance startup, MyC4, that just launched its public beta in September and offers microloan gift certificates (here).

The recipient of the gift certificate logs in and chooses an entrepreneur to assist. For example, the inset is from a listing for a Cambodian village looking to Kiva for $600 to purchase a second cow and a motorbike trailer.

For your kids, it's a great lesson in business, demonstrating how a small amount of capital can make a huge difference in someone's life. And it's a gift that keeps on giving. As the loan is repaid, it can be lent back out to someone else.

Kiva Gift Certificate

MyC4 Gift Certificate

Prosper is one of the few (only???) national retail financial services companies that holds a users conference. The second annual Prosper Days is scheduled for Feb. 25/26 in San Francisco (more info here) and costs $55 in advance or $75 after Jan. 31. This year, they've added a famous keynoter, Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner. I will also be on stage later as part of a panel discussion of bloggers covering the space.

The conference is an excellent idea, creating a buzz around the company and providing a platform for its most loyal customers to share success stories and network. It's a model eBay has used successfully for years. The addition of Dubner should increase press coverage and attendance.  

I'm also impressed at how Prosper reuses the content created for the conference. The sessions are recorded and posted to its website to help educate borrowers and lenders. A total of ten videos are available here (see screenshot below).

You know you are losing the PR battle when headlines like this begin to appear:

The point of Tuesday's column from MSNBC's Bob Sullivan, is that consumers fear overdraft fees more than fraud. Hmmm....would that have anything to do with the fact that customers PAY for overdraft fees while the bank picks up the tab for most fraud?

But even overlooking that minor piece of common sense, how does annoyance at overdraft fees equate to being "scarier than criminals?" The headline does a disservice to Sullivan's well-researched and thoughtful column.  

What Banks Should Do
While the headlines will hopefully be a bit more objective, expect more of the same in the coming year. Overdraft fees are becoming a big story. And as the 2008 election cycle kicks in to full gear, expect more grandstanding from politicians on both sides of the aisle. No one wants to be on record as being "for" overdraft fees, or any bank fee for that matter.

Banks need to do two things to head off a PR disaster and avoid pricing caps and/or more regulation from Congress:

1. Look hard at overdraft fee policies including both size and timing of the charges. And if you do find a way to cap/lower or lower overdraft fees, wrap that news in a big bow and deliver it to your customers for the holidays. And if you have a lower fee than the big banks in your market, by all means, let your customers know.  

2. Proactively sell overdraft protection options and balance-awareness services such as online/mobile banking and low-balance alerts via email and text message.

And one more thing:

In press interviews and marketing messages, eliminate all references to "courtesy" and "a service for our customers" in describing overdraft fees. Stay on the message that the onus is on the customer to track their balances. Here's a great response, ABA congressional testimony quoted in the MSNBC article:

The bottom line is that customers are in the best position to know what their actual balance is -- only they know what checks they have written, automatic payments they have authorized and debit card transactions they have approved," Nessa Feddis, a spokeswoman for the American Bankers Association, said during congressional hearings earlier this year. "Simply put, consumers are in control of their finances and can avoid overdraft fees.

My teenage son has just starting "Facebooking," and he loves it. It's his first foray into social networking, and I can tell he'll be a user for the rest of his life, or at least until something better comes along.

Those of us who are merely parents of social network users often find it difficult to understand its power. In my son's circle, Facebook IS the Internet. It's where every online session begins and ends and where important social connections are made and nurtured. That's why strategic investors such as Microsoft, Google and others are said to be giving Facebook as much as a $10 billion valuation (see previous coverage here).  

All this has enormous implication for every retailer and service company on the planet. It amplifies word of mouth exponentially. Remember the old adage that every disappointed customer tells 10 people about their problem. With the instant broadcasting capabilities, an unhappy customer can now share his/her thoughts with 100+ Facebook friends with a single click (note 1).  

And it's not something that is 15, 10 or even 5 years away. It's happening today. Case in point: this summer HSBC (UK) was forced to reverse a policy change that would have ended a common perk for U.K. student banking accounts, a multi-year grace period for overdraft credit lines with limits up to US$3,000 (see HSBC student page here).

Local students were so taken aback by this change in account terms, they formed a Facebook group called, "Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off" (here or see screenshot below). Apparently the group was planning to rally its 5,000 members into a little civil disobedience. The group was hoping to cause customer service headaches by flooding the bank's branches, and overloading teller lines, with student customers asking for detailed explanations of the new fees.

According to news reports (here and here), the bank quickly backed off the rate change and reverted to the liberal interest-free borrowing guidelines.

Implications
You should be using, tracking, analyzing, and brainstorming about how to tap social networks for sales, marketing, service, and recruitment.  

Note:

1. And the simple click-and-complain activity can be broadcast to every friend before the disgruntled customer has a chance to cool down (and/or sober up) and think through the issue in a more rational way.

If you were in the office yesterday, you probably heard about Bank of America's announcement of SafePass, an optional out-of-band authorization technique for high-risk online banking transactions. It was all over the news, including the trades, blogs, and a few mainstream press articles. Here's the press release.

The system, common in many countries, but available only at Citibank in the United States (previous coverage here), sends users a 6-digit code via text message. The code is then entered at BofA's website to authorize larger transfers, new bill-pay merchants, new accounts for funds transfer, or to login from a new computer, not previously "registered" for online banking. VeriSign developed the technology.

The service will roll out across the BofA empire this year, with many customers having it as soon as next week. Next year, a wallet-card token "SafePass card" will be offered for customers who don't have text-messaging capabilities on their phones.

Analysis
SafePass is a solid enhancement to security, at least perceived security, since it probably won't do much to cut down on actual fraud losses. It's already pretty difficult to get through BofA's security gates and pull money out of someone's online account. The bank did the right thing in making it optional. Only the paranoiacs, road warriors, or those with unusually high transaction amounts will want to undergo the extra steps.   

So while it may be ho-hum in terms of fraud reductions, SafePass is brilliant marketing (note 1). It's a tangible and easily understood copy-point as to why one should choose BofA over the other 15,000 U.S. financial institutions. Think of the bragging rights they now have (all firsts are U.S. only):

• First to integrate mobile messaging into the authentication process
• First to offer optional extra security
• First to safeguard the process of adding a new bill payment payee
• Potentially first to offer choice of token or mobile text message for out-of-channel authorization
• Only bank able to put "SafePass" on their website—a very good name
• Able to say, "no one has more security options than us"
• Able to say they are a "pioneer in security enhancements"
• Able to they "put the customer in charge of their own extra security"
• And so on ...

Congratulations to Bank of America for once again raising the bar in online security.

Rant
While I like what the bank has done, once again I find it astonishing that even 48 hours after releasing the news in a press release here, THERE IS NOTHING ON THE BofA WEBSITE ABOUT IT. A site search for "SafePass" pretending to be from North Carolina, New York, or California results yields just a single obscure business insurance product. Bank of America's search doesn't even return the press release announcing the service!

SafePass is also not mentioned in the bank's security, online banking, or mobile banking sections. I've worked in a Fortune 50 company, so I understand all too well how hard it is to sync advertising, PR, sales, and so on at a huge company. But with 22 million active online banking users, you'd think BofA would be a leader in syncing its website to its marketing plan. 

Am I being overly critical?  It's certainly worth writing about. 

Note:

1. For more information on the synergy between security and marketing efforts, see our full report on the subject at Online Banking Report.

Note: Part one of this series can be found here.

On blogs I visit discussing social media, one ongoing debate concerns metrics. Some claim that metrics for social media projects are not meaningful; some claim that new metrics must be developed to gauge social behaviour. Some even claim that metrics aren't needed.

I believe that it is essential to have meaningful key-performance indicators in place for a social media project, as you would for any other project. You must know what success will look like to know if the project is worth repeating or not. Some of these metrics are familiar Web metrics, some are more similar to offline advertising, some are similar to PR metrics, and some are indeed brand new and hard to measure.

For ChangeEverything.ca we measure a few things that are familiar to anyone who runs a website:

• Unique visitors
• Time on site
• Referring URLs
• Natural search results
• Number of registered users
• Number of active users (need to define for yourself)

We also measure "Web 2.0" stuff:

• Our Technorati authority ranking
• The number of RSS subscribers
• Conversions of visitors to contributors (people who make it through the registration or content-creation funnels)

Like offline media, we measure how many people in our geographic region are aware of the site, just like we track awareness of our television campaigns. We also measure how many can link it back to our brand.

Like our PR, we try to measure the earned media the site has garnered for us, which has been significant, with lots of positive coverage on TV, radio and newspapers. We also keep track of what bloggers say about us. We consider a blogger writing positively about ChangeEverything.ca to be an unsolicited third-party endorsement. Happily, almost all blog posts so far have been positive, as have our earned media. It's difficult to criticize this project since most press coverage is about how the site has helped the community in some way. And that leads us to the most interesting metric by far.

Where we need new metrics is on the issue of real-world impact. This was not a metric we had in place prior to launch—honestly, it never occurred to us. But it became necessary because of activities happening in the real world (remember that?) due to the influence of the site. The first time this became obvious was after a bad snowstorm Vancouver in November 2006. The site's amazing community moderator Kate created a post called Got Hats? and asked for people to donate warm clothing and blankets to the homeless. This initiative took off and over the next few days, we estimate that more than 4,000 pieces of clothing, blankets, pillows, and, yes, hats were donated to local shelters, all via communication and organization on the site. The change occurred while snow was still on the ground, while the need was still very real, and even a matter of life and death. It was the first clue that we were onto something truly important.

There are many positive traits the site lends to the Vancity brand. ChangeEverything.ca is more than a bunch of people discussing local issues they want to change. The site has created real impact in the communities Vancity serves. Since the Got Hats? episode, we have seen the impact of the tremendous exposure a woman on the site has received for blogging in depth about her valiant attempt to give up plastics in 2007, the successful implementation of a bike share experiment in Vancouver and now a contest where people can win $1,000 to give to an organization making change for the good (appropriately called ChangeSomething).

Traditional Web metrics can't measure the human terms of this impact, and that's the beauty of social media. It spills over into people's lives, because people are in the driver's seat. We need to expand our view of key performance indicators for social media so they reflect the project's success, which now includes the true impact of these projects on our communities.

I think that explains why those of us who advocate for the appropriate use of social media are so passionate about our work.

If you live in the U.S. hurricane zone, the memories of the summer of 2005 are still all too fresh. That's why it's great to see Gulfport, Mississippi-based Hancock Bank take a proactive approach to storm season with its "storm readiness" plan released in a June 1 press release (here).* 

While normally, your disaster planning efforts rate no more than a deep link on your website, Gulf Coast residents need more prominent reassurances. Hancock does a great job reassuring customers in its press release covering these four areas of storm preparation: 

• Designated certain branches "lighthouse branches -- beacons to safety." These branches stay open as long as possible and re-open as soon as possible. Emergency procedures for employee communications, food, shelter, back-up power, and fuel are detailed.
• Offsite backup for its website and online banking so there will be "virtually no downtime." 
• Data center precautions, including safeguards at its main center, dubbed "the fortress," plus plans for emergency off-site backup.
• ATM system procedures and priorities in the event of a prolonged emergency.

Analysis
Overall, this is a good press release and sound plan, especially the concept of "lighthouse branches" which play off the company's logo and branding. It should receive good play in the local media.

However, I couldn't find this info anywhere on the bank's website, other than the press release buried in Investor Relations. This time of year there should be a prominent link to the bank's plan on the homepage or at least in the personal banking section. If you were looking for a new bank in the Gulf area, this would help your decision.

And financial institutions should do even more by making online banking and electronic communications prominent in the disaster plan. Here are eight additional ideas. While, some would require product development, they are relatively minor projects. Financial institution benefits are in italics.  

1. Create a "customer communication plan" that send emails or text messages to customers to keep them informed of developments with branch, ATM, and online banking outages. 
       Helps bump up online banking and email registrations. 
   
2. Remind customers how important it is to have up-to-date email addresses and cell phone numbers on file. 
       Helps improve your delivery rate on marketing and
       service messages.
   
3. Since customers may not have power, they may need to rely on mobile phones for information. And since waiting on hold uses up precious phone charge time, create a call-back plan for emergencies. Customers would call or text the bank requesting a call back on their mobile.  
        Helps differentiate you from the competition.
   
4. Create an "open branch & ATM" query. Customers could send a text message requesting a list (with address, phone number) of all open branches and ATMs.  
        Again, differentiates you from the competition.
        And if ever needed, will help create lifetime customers.
   
5. Let customers use designated branches to charge phones or laptops in the event of widespread power outage.
        More differentiation and customer advocacy.
   
6. Develop a blog that can be used to keep customers apprised of any changes to banking services. Several employees should be prepared to update the blog through mobile phones if power was out. And at least one person should have access to a satellite phone so they can remotely post updates to the blog (perhaps working with someone outside the disaster zone, who can do the actual typing/posting).
        Another great relationship builder.
   
7. The Web-based branch finder should include a search for "lighthouse branches." 
        Expose your impressive disaster preparations to
        prospective new customers.
   
8. Refer customers to disaster preparation website resources for so they can put together household stockpiles and family communication plans.
        More customer advocacy, not to mention the "right" thing to do. 

*Full disclosure: We have done some website evaluation work in the past for Hancock Bank.   

A few days after our recent post on pro-environment banking programs (here), we were greeted with this headline in yesterday's Seattle P-I:

The tide has definitely turned in media perceptions of online banking. Here's a short history of the mass media view of online banking:

1994 to 1997: Sounds good, but what is it?

1998 to 1999: All things online are great

2000 to 2002: All things online are over-hyped

2003 to 2006: Is it really secure?

2007 to ???: Protecting the earth and yourself 

Naturally, I think online banking is great, but I never expected to see it elevated to motherhood-and-apple-pie status. The PI article (here) uses recent NACHA and Javelin numbers to recommend online banking both for its paper-saving and identity-theft prevention benefits. Time Magazine (April 9 issue) also listed "paying your bills online" as one of 51 things consumers can do now to help the environment (here).

However, Time might need to beef up the math skills on its fact-checking team. The article says paying all bills online would save 1.6 billion tons of paper. That would be more than 2,000 pounds every month for every U.S. household, even I don't get that much junk mail. I'm guessing they meant 1.6 billion pounds not tons, which would be about 15 pounds of bills per year per household.  

Much virtual ink has been spilled over ING Direct's Electric Orange account, and the new checking account isn't even available to the general public. From its Internet cafes to subway sponsorships, this is a bank that knows how to generate buzz, which really isn't all that easy with checking and savings accounts (see here for previous coverage of ING Direct).

Searching for <"Electric Orange" + review> on Google, we found six full-scale reviews of the product among the first 100 organic listings (10 pages of results using the default settings). All were blog postings. Most were moderately positive, and only one took shots at the bank calling the rates "too good to be true" (see Watch Your Wallet below).

It illustrates an interesting new phenomena, the power of the personal finance blogosphere. Most top-ranked search results belong not to mainstream press accounts, but to bloggers writing from various levels of knowledge about banking and finance. Most of the top-ranked blog reviews were thorough, factual, and relatively unbiased. But a few bits of misinformation creep in now and again, such as the rumor that the account stops paying interest on the sixth transaction in a statement period (false, by the way). Financial institutions should monitor these postings and jump in with a comment and/or email to the author to correct any factual errors.

Here's a list of what the personal finance bloggers are saying about Electric Orange:

1. Highest-ranked review on Google (#2 overall)

Getting-Green.blogspot.com

Date: 13 Feb. 2007

Verdict: Positive

URL: http://getting-green.blogspot.com/2007/02/banking-reviews-ings-electric-orange.html

2. Second-highest ranked blog review (#4 overall)

MyMoneyBlog.com

Date: 2 Dec. 2006

Verdict: Positive

URL: http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2006/12/ing-direct-electric-orange-checking-account-feature-review.html

3. Third-highest blog review (#5 overall)

TheSunsFinancialDiary.com

Date: 30 Nov. 2006 (#7 overall)

Verdict: Positive

URL: http://www.thesunsfinancialdiary.com/2006/11/30/electric-orange-ings-paperless-checking-account/

4. Fourth-highest blog review (#33 overall)

BankDeals.Blogspot.com

Date: 29 Nov. 2006

Verdict: Neutral

URL: http://bankdeals.blogspot.com/2006/11/ing-directs-new-checking-account-now.html

5. Fifth-highest blog review (#46 overall)

NextCU.com (Callahan)

Date: 4 Dec. 2006

Verdict: Neutral

URL: http://www.nextcu.com/2006/12/electric_orange_covering_the_b_1.html

6. Sixth-highest blog review (#65 overall)

WatchYourWallet.blogspot.com

Date: 28 Dec. 2006

Verdict: Somewhat negative

URL: http://watchyourwallet.blogspot.com/2006/12/ing-directs-new-electric-orange.html

When's the last time you saw a new Web app that:

1. Was good for your brand
2. Was useful for your customers/members
3. Gave your employees a voice 
4. Helped your community
5. Had zero IT support cost
6. Allowed you to begin blogging with virtually none of the risks of a typical blog
7. Caused non-customers to bookmark your site and/or subscribe to its feed
8. Prompted the local press to write glowing reviews
9. Put your name in front of community organizations, and their well-connected board members
10. And was affordable?

Take a look at the Web-based volunteer clearinghouse originally conceived by CU thinktank Filene Research Institute. The application is being commercialized as Give With Us by Trabian, a Dallas-based design firm that built Filene's prototype called My Community Connection (see note 1). 

You can see the original Filene version in production at SELCO Community Credit Union <selco.cugive.com>, where 77 volunteer opportunities have been posted since its launch less than six months ago (see note 2). The revamped, and much more Web 2.0-looking, version from Trabian will be housed at the cleverly named <www.givewith.us>. The online product tour is not yet available, but we have the world premier exclusive screenshot below, courtesy of Trey Reeme of Trabian.

How it works
The application is basically a blog where anyone can post volunteer opportunities. Readers can take action by clicking a button to either:

• Sign up
• Email a friend
• Leave a comment

Unlike other community websites that are bookmarked once then forgotten, users can sign up for a feed so that new opportunities continue to flow to their feedreader or browser. Hopefully, they'll add an email subscription option for the majority of users who are not yet using feeds.

Cost
The cost is $2,500 upfront plus $1,000 annually for the license. I don't need to tell you what a bargain that is. You get state-of-the-art blog design and functionality for the price of a Yellow Pages' ad.

You will need to assign a staff member to moderate the blog, clearing postings and comments for final publication. Assuming two posts and a couple comments each week, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes a day. But it needs constant attention, you can't have the moderator on vacation for a week with no substitute.

Analysis
The biggest problem will be attention, or rather lack of it. How do you get overworked volunteers and nonprofit staffers to take time to post volunteer opportunities? Even harder, how do you get the community to remember to look at your blog when they are in a volunteering mood?

SELCO has a link on its homepage <selco.org>, but how do you reach out to the larger community to make this relevant? The SELCO website has 77 volunteer postings, but only 3 comments in the past 6 months. That suggests it's relatively lightly used by those donating their time. 

But any new offering takes time to get rolling. It's not unrealistic that you could end up being THE place in your market where volunteer opportunities are publicized. But that will take more effort than just posting it on your homepage.

For example, searching for "volunteers in Eugene," SELCO's home market, doesn't bring up the CU's site until result number 160, far too low for anyone to notice (see note 2). Selco should consider using Google AdSense to get its program listed in search results. With no other bidders, it'll only take a dime or so to get the number-one listing.

Another way to receive more attention would be integrating the volunteer opportunities with fund-raising services. For example, a financial institution could create a "donate here" button for the organization's website that instantly deposits donated funds into the nonprofit's checking account. 

Notes:

1. Trabian is a specialist in Web 2.0 design and so-called "social media." The company also built Filene's website along with several interesting credit union sites; refer to its website for a client listing. Trabian also runs the OpenSourceCU blog tracking, which tracks blogs and other social media in the credit union market.   
2. Click on the screenshot at right to see the front page of SELCO's My Community Connection site.
3. The number-one result is a competing site, VolunteerMatch.org
   which lists 98 opportunities in a tabular format.

Update (Nov. 12, 10 AM PST): Twenty-two hours later, the Verity website has been taken offline, but the blog is still running. However, there are no new posts since the original, although Verity's Shari Storm has responded to several member comments. From information in the comments, it sounds like Verity's log-in page was redirected for up to four hours on Saturday morning beginning about 6:00 AM. At least one member said they answered "screening questions" including mother's maiden name.

Seattle-based Verity Credit Union is in the midst of a major website spoof that began earlier today. The credit union is reporting that the log-in function to online banking, located on its homepage (upper-right below), has been redirected by a hacker.

Apparently, only the log-in function was hijacked. The credit union has control of its homepage and plastered a large warning over the front. The link after the warning, "more information," linked to the Verity blog for updates (see below).

It appears the log-in process is back under the credit union's control, although the warning is still there. When attempting to log in at 3:15 PM with a test name (I do not have a Verity account), I was redirected to an error message at <https://secure-veritycu.com/Common/SignOn/SignOnError.asp>, which appears to be a legitimate Verity secure page. There was no follow-up question asking for my credit card number as mentioned in the blog post (see below).

The incident was first posted to their blog at 12:02 PM today (see post below).

The silver lining
As bad as this is, Verity should be applauded for the rapid response, using both its website and blog to get the word out. Presumably, they also emailed customers, but those messages may or may not be believed in this day of rampant phishing.

You can follow the ongoing drama at the Verity blog, where customers have been redirected for the latest news. We'll keep you posted.

Although our readers won't find much new information in today's Wall Street Journal article, Online Banking Strives for the Human Touch, it's significant for two reasons:

• Another example of a leading personal finance writer looking for "the next big thing" in online banking (see also NetBanker June 28); expect a wave of these stories through year-end
• The article included a full-text screenshot of a banking chat session with SunTrust. You might circulate this among your reps so they understand that what they write in a chat session potentially becomes part of the "public record" (by the way, the SunTrust rep, and/or the marketing guru who scripted the canned responses, deserve a raise for their sales technique).

If you make it to the end, you'll find a couple interesting online lending factoids:

• Bank of America claims an 8-fold increase in online-mortgage sales in Q1 2006 compared to the year earlier quarter, with live-chat part of the reason; it also said home-equity loan volume doubled
• Citbank says 90% of its live-chat users complete a home-equity application, presumably at its <myhomeequity.com> site mentioned earlier in the story (see screenshot above); the bank also said it expects to originate $2 billion in home equity loans online in 2006, double that in 2005

--JB

Earlier in the year, we lamented the lack of creativity by banks in leveraging Super Bowl mania at their websites (see NetBanker Feb. 3). Not so with the other "football."

National Australia Bank promotes its World Cup entrant, the Socceroos, with a clever, make-your-own ad microsite (see screenshots below). A small graphic on its homepage (click on inset for closeup) leads users to the interactive ad-building site. Users create custom video shorts by dragging-and-dropping video clips into a storyboard. User then adds own text and chooses from several soundtracks to complete the creation. Ads are posted online and can be viewed either by looking at "the latest," "the most popular," or celebrity ads. There are 320 posted as of today.

Analysis
This is smart in so many ways:

1. The novelty of the website creates positive publicity in the media, on and off-line.
2. The bank creates a positive association with its brand by leveraging the national pride generated by a World Cup entrant.
3. The "cool factor" of interactive content positions the bank as "with it."
4. As users upload their ads to video-sharing services such as YouTube, the bank will get a viral marketing boost. The bank wisely plasters its name at the beginning and end of the content, positioning itself on an equal footing with the end-user author (see inset). 

This is another clever example of user-generated content, something we'll see more of as mainstream businesses ride the wave of blogging's popularity: MySpace, YouTube, and 10,000 Web startups. (Click on the link below for additional screenshots). --JB

First page of the ad making microsite:

Listing of favorite ads:

Listing of celeb ads:

Talk about thinking outside the box: Instead of serving coffee in its branches, Union National Community Bank <uncb.com> is serving checking accounts in a cafe. The $400 million bank, headquartered in Mt. Joy, Penn., is using a strategy similar to ING Direct, except UNCB has gone as far as to remove its brand from the name, calling the financial store "Gold Cafe" (see picture right).

The cafe features a full retail coffee operation with coffee, lattes, tea, smoothies and so on priced at $1.45 to $4.45 and pastries and desserts from $1.75 to $2.25. The coffee service is run by Lancaster County Coffee Roasters.

The branding has also been extended to its website, GoldCafes.com, where the concept is supported with an emphasis on the lengthy hours, 6:30 am to 7:00 pm, Monday through Saturday, and noon to 5:00 pm on Sundays, 82 hours in total. The website also features information on an iPod giveaway during its May 11-13 grand opening. The only banking product mentioned is free checking in the lower-right corner (see screenshot).

The branch, er cafe, located near a major community college in Lancaster, Penn., includes a coffee bar, couches, an outdoor patio, fireplace, free Wi-Fi, and the ubiquitous plasma screen monitors. The bank has also created Sip, a "cultural newszine" available only in the cafe. A second cafe is set to open later this year in Centerville.

Analysis
We can't predict whether this concept ultimately works. Although we like the new-age branch concept popularized by Umpqua and others, this might be over the top. One of the biggest reasons to build branches is for their advertising value, placing the bank's brand in front of thousands of commuters and errand-runners each day. By calling it the Gold Cafe, the UNCB loses the normal branding value, but the highly unusual strategy will generate a large amount of publicity, overcoming the initial customer confusion of using a bank named "Gold Cafe." However, this is a unique situation that wouldn't readily work for other financial institutions.

The initial website is just a single page (see above) and badly needs an upgrade to cash in on all the publicity. At a minimum, prospective customers should be able to get a virtual tour of the cafe and open an account online. The site will be heavily visited by banking analysts and reporters and should do a better job supporting the publicity it's bound to attract, although the parent's home page does include a series of photos of the new concept along with a Gold Cafe link in the main navigation (see screenshot right).

If anyone has a chance to visit the branch, let me know what you think of it.

--JB

If you've got it, flaunt it. Or so the saying goes.

In an online financial services first, newly launched person-to-person loan marketplace Prosper (Netbanker Archives) includes an "In the Blogs" section in its online Media Room. The link, positioned between the traditional "In the News" and "Press Releases" sections, allows users to easily read about the company in pre-selected online blogs (click on inset for a closeup).

This provides much more material to view than the three news articles and single press release the 3-week-old company has posted. The company has control over the content; so don't expect to see links to any ProsperSucks blogs down the road. 

For Prosper, the blog links provide several benefits:

• Several are authored by Prosper group leaders, so they contain ongoing encouragement for the lending exchange
• The newness of their business model provides good fodder for inclusion in wide variety of blogs
• They are too new to have much negative talk in the blogs

Action items
Most financial institutions receive little press play, there just isn't that much newsworthy in the daily battle to sell and service deposit and loan accounts. However, if you are well received in your community, you may be receiving good feedback from local bloggers. Linking to these posts could be a valuable addition to your "About Us" section.

--JB