More consumers are signing up for high-speed Internet connections, and banks are realizing that the move presents an opportunity to offer more services and flashier advertisements.
Some observers say the future of online banking depends on high-speed, or broadband, connections.
"The reason people are switching to broadband is that they want faster performance for all the sites they visit," said Catherine Palmieri, the director of Citibank.com. The Citigroup Inc. unit is offering several new features to capitalize on the trend, she said.
Next year, for example, Citibank's online-banking customer service agents will be able to take over a customer's screen, or "cobrowse," Ms. Palmieri said. They will be able to send a customer's cursor to specific points on the screen, to help the customer find a link or a dialogue box in which to enter information. The feature "really doesn't lend itself to the dial-up environment," she said.
George Tubin, a senior analyst at TowerGroup, a Needham, Mass., unit of MasterCard International, said other banking companies, including Wells Fargo & Co., have tried this.
"Banks that have done cobrowsing have found a number of things," Mr. Tubin said. "One, that the application submission rate goes up incredibly. Two … the error rate when they are submitted is drastically reduced."
Citi plans to begin running more graphic-intensive advertising next year - but only for broadband customers. Internet browsers typically store components of a frequently accessed site, such as a logo, which can then be displayed without forcing the computer to download it each session. This can speed Web surfing but is less necessary for broadband customers, who can retrieve such components every time they go to a site.
A high-speed Internet connection "gives us the ability to be more visually interesting" and deliver a personalized ad to the customer, Ms. Palmieri said.
Because sites can detect a visitor's connection speed Citi can display the same ad on multiple pages so that dial-up connections do not get clogged downloading new images. Citi can also deliver a more visually compelling ad for broadband users, she said.
"We know who you are and can deliver a message … that's targeted to you," Ms. Palmieri said.
Chris Musto, a vice president for research at Watchfire GomezPro in Waltham, Mass., said that though "online banking is a relatively low-bandwidth activity," advertising could get more complex as more information can be provided with a high-speed connection.
Such capabilities - which would have been impossible to develop with slower analog modems - could soon become more common. According to a recent study by NetRatings Inc., 51%, or 63 million, of all U.S. Web users have high-speed connections at home, 55% more than a year ago.
Some banks claim that an even higher percentage of their users access their site through high-speed lines. Bank of America Corp. said that over 60% of its online customers use a broadband connection; at Wachovia Corp. the figure is 66%.
The increased capabilities that come from higher-bandwidth Internet pipes can also increase demands on banks' servers.
Stephen Schroth, the senior vice president for e-commerce strategy and planning at Wachovia, said rising broadband use has presented a challenge, in part because the lines are always on. Users do not have to bother with dial-up procedures or wait for pages to load, so they can visit Wachovia.com several times a day, he said.
That required the Charlotte company to add servers to increase its processing capabilities to support the site, he said. "Broadband for them means 'always on.' For us, that translates to 'always available.' "
Mr. Musto said the experience is typical. "Broadband connections make people happier to use the Internet in general. If you tend to be online more often, then you'll tend to use online banking more often."
The exclusively online E-Trade Financial Corp. assumes that most of its tech-savvy customers have broadband connections, said Rob Snow, a vice president of E-Trade Bank. Many of its promotions emphasize speed - such as a two-second guarantee to execute certain stock trades - and a broadband connection is almost a necessity to support them, he said.
"The expectation is that a lot of customers are moving to broadband, particularly online financial services customers," he said. "If you're an active user of the Internet and you're using a dial-up connection, you're going to want to throw your computer out the window."
