Large US regional banks are gaining ground on their bigger rivals in the online banking market, according to the latest quarterly Internet ratings from Speer & Associates.
Over the past two years, S&A has performed a quarterly Web site analysis, tracking the business development and transactional capabilities of 157 financial institution sites across North and Latin America.
The results of the latest study reveal meaningful progress has been made by large US regional banks ($40 to $100 billion in assets), as this segment elevated its overall ranking in the survey from fourth position a year ago to second in the 2001 survey.
Reuben Clarson, the study’s leader, comments: “The sites of large regional financial institutions, like National City, continue to lead in providing transactional capability. This attribute, coupled with advances in business development features on sites such as Mellon and KeyBank resulted in a better overall score for the segment and confirms this group is gaining serious ground on the largest banks in leveraging the capabilities of the Internet.”
Other key findings of the study show:
* Wells Fargo maintaining its top position with the best-performing Web-based product;
* two Latin American banks, Banamex and Banco de Galicia, dramatically improving their business development practices and expanding their transactional capabilities;
* the number of sites reaching transactional capability ‘Level 4’ rose from 60% in S&A’s December 2000 Study to 71%; and
* the baseline for basic functionality, regardless of the size of the bank, has elevated over the last year.
Richard Speer, S&A CEO, says: “The results of this study confirm financial institutions continue to raise the bar and aggressively enhance their sites with emerging features and functionality.”
He warns, however, that banks will not succeed in differentiating their Web sites based on transactional features alone, but must look to personalised marketing tactics, channel integration and CRM functionality.