Having played this game since Lynx browser and dialup apana, its great to see some milestones in banking hit over the last month or two.

MILESTONE

Bank of America with their 10 million users shows that Internet banking should be considered (for now) the primary channel for bank interaction with the customer. 

MILLSTONE

Those of us who remember trying to get these systems live in the mid-90's will remember the scorn or disbelief that these could be a useful system, that customers might use them, that bank security would be fatally compromised, that they would only be used by the crazy, quirky, techno, etc.  How many innovators in banking have heard that recent for product a, b, or c. How big was the launch team and budget in your bank for this 'fad' channel?

MILESTONE

Westpac demonstrates with 1m customers of mobile that this service has come of age quickly - Westpac has over 8m customers, but declare 2m on their website as users of internet banking, so this number is very compelling if it is a 50% takeup.  Would be great to see some new channel stats from all banks on the different channels of use (and customer use rather than logins).

MILLSTONE

I wonder if we looked at  bank expense budgets whether any bank would have the right expense and resource share for these channels.  How large should be the team operating and enhancing this system in comparison to the team/budget operating the branches. Note I am not saying these new cheap delivery systems should not deliver some cost saving to the group, but imagine if the top table discussion each week spent 20% of time on mobile, 40% on internet banking, 20% of time on third parties and 20% on the branch - any bets on current mix...

We are on the verge of the next great revolution in banking, where technology finally takes the friction out of interacting with a bank and delivers the right services to the right people when they need it.  Lets hope we can adjust thinking and resource allocation to take advantage of this shift.