E-Banking What Next? (Retail Banking)

what next? That question that has ricocheted through our private lives and public institutions since Sept. 11. It may seem too momentous a question to ask about workaday issues in banking. Even with firm resolve to forge ahead, forecasting the future isn't what it used to be. Does that mean we throw out all the analyses and projections that seemed so persuasive in late summer? Most likely not; and we don't in this article. But certainly the aftershocks of Sept. 11 have, in ways we don't yet know, disturbed the most important element in banking: the mindsets and value sets of our customers. Perhaps the deepest question is this: Will consumers want more isolation or more community in their daily lives? That is, will fear of sudden terror in the outside world make home feel like a more comfortable place for such activities as chatting, shopping...and remote self-service banking? Or will a heightened awareness of what's really important in life tend to make people gravitate to the company of real people at neighborhood parties and weddings and worship--in preference to machines and virtual communities? Will the possibility of receiving an anthrax-powdered envelope give a big boost to e-mail?. . .e-checks? . . . bill presentment? Will the internet seem more secure? . . . more private? Will the vaunted payments infrastructure become another target of terror? Will the fears and hassles of flying make smart ID cards and biometrics feel like welcome protection and convenience, not intrusions? A quarter of a year later, it's still too soon to recalculate projections of market shares and consumer attitudes with any confidence. So bankers will have to watch trends closely to see which way the market actually goes, keeping in mind that the current volatile environment could easily cause sudden reversals in attitudes, values, and preferences. A few players dominate First, a definition. For purposes of this article, e-banking refers to electronic banking over the internet. The service is provided both by traditional with brick-and-mortar branches and e-banks (or virtual or direct banks) that deliver their services primarily over the internet. E-banks can have some brick-and-mortar facilities: telephone and web call centers and, increasingly, physical touch points for in-person demos and consultation. They must offer a general line of banking services - internet credit-card banks don't qualify. At yearend 2000, there were 1,850 FDIC-insured commercial and savings institutions--19% of the country's 9,821 depository institutions--offering e-banking, as defined prior. That leaves nearly 8,000 e-banking have-nots. That number shrank appreciably in 2001, but, as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently projected for nationally chartered banks, it's likely that almost half of all financial institutions have no plans to offer e-banking, ever. At the other end of the spectrum are eight big and two much smaller but very successful e-banks that together have about 35% of the estimated 16 million e-banking accounts in the U.S. Adding in three Canadian banks, these 13 North American leaders have 19.7 million e-banking accounts, according to TowerGroup research, led by Frank Caruana. Note that these are accounts, not individuals or households. A better criterion than simple enrollment is whether an account is active--has been used in the previous month. Some of the main features of e-banking demographics are summarized in the above table. The top three in the TowerGroup study--Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Wachovia (after acquisition by First Union)--each have more than three million accounts (not identified as active). A few are seeing growth rates of more than 100,000 new accounts per month. Taken together, between yearend 1998 and July 2001 the number of e-banking accounts at the 13 top North American grew at a compound annual rate of 101%. …

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