Investment Services: Internet Information Tools Empower Bank Brokers

The Internet revolution in financial services means bank brokers no longer need to be relegated to the role of poor step-siblings when compared to their counterparts at major investment houses. The historical advantage that proprietary networks and advanced research have brought to nonbank brokers is being chipped away by Internet tools that give bank brokers easy access to some of the same financial information. "Decades of advantage of size and proprietary networks will be vanishing in a very short period of time-18 to 24 months," says Marc Ferguson, founder and chairman of MoneyStar Communications.

MoneyStar hopes to accelerate this shift with its financial network and LifeScript products which give brokers an interactive investment planning and modeling tool to be used at the point-of-sale that is supported by an Internet accessible warehouse of industry pricing and market data.

Comerica Securities was one of the first institutions to beta test the software. One broker realized a 40-times return on the bank's $475-a-seat annual investment cost for the system in the first four months he used the software. His productivity increased above the Comerica average of $450 invested per client to $750 per client after he began using the system, says Dave Valentine, regional vp of Comerica Securities. "The thing clients need the most is a tool to help them with their financial objectives, and that's what MoneyStar does for us."

Other clients include California Federal Bank, Dime Securities, Norwest Investment Services and First Security Investor Services.

MoneyStar's information comes into a bank via an Internet connection to a centralized server on the institution's network, eliminating the need for individual broker Internet connections. Institutions select which product information brokers have access to, with product literature advertised in a standardized HTML format by investment product firms. Firms, like mutual fund companies, pay MoneyStar to load their performance histories, investment portfolios and management profiles into MoneyStar's data warehouse, an alternative charge to traditional marketing costs of printing and mailing product literature.

The MoneyStar system is geared for larger financial institutions, Ferguson says, because "there (are) so many efficiencies to be gained at an enterprise level, from compliance to integration with legacy systems for CIS and order entry."

-sausner tfn.com