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As many banks break the unpleasant news to consumers about the disappearance of checking account perks, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. has developed a way to make customers feel empowered about the changes.
March 30 -
Personal financial management sites for years have helped consumers get smarter about saving money. Now they're helping them get smarter about going into debt.
March 24
PNC's new Money Bar Desktop widget brands the bank as an angel on the shoulder of its customers, an ever-present advocate reminding consumers to spend responsibly.
The tool, part of PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s online-focused Virtual Wallet account, graphically depicts users' cash positions in real time without requiring them to log in to the full online banking site. It does not list balances, instead using color-coded representations about cash reserves in relation to coming bills and warning consumers when they are at risk of slipping into danger zones with their spending.
Consumers can configure the widget to send alerts when spending reaches a critical point, and the widget provides a quick link to the full online banking site if users need to move money around. Observers say this elevates PNC's brand, giving it a persistent but unobtrusive presence in consumers' everyday lives.
"You are looking at this thing all day long, and from a branding perspective, this presents an opportunity to bring the [bank customer] closer," said Jacob Jegher, a senior analyst at the research firm Celent. "If you like [Money Bar Desktop], the affinity could result in a sale of additional products."
Jegher cautioned that marketing through the widget would have to be handled very carefully, and almost passively, as pop-ups for new bank products might alienate customers.
Nicole Sturgill, a research director at TowerGroup in Needham, Mass., said "PNC has done a good job of building community around Virtual Wallet and getting feedback."
Mike Ley, vice president in the e-business and payments group for PNC, said, "We have known, listening to consumers, that they want to be aware of what is going on in their accounts."
Virtual Wallet is a series of three connected checking and savings accounts. One of the features it has had since its 2008 debut is a Money Bar slider that allows consumers to move money among the accounts by moving a slider on the bar.
The new Money Bar Desktop application tests whether a streamlined version of this tool would be useful for consumers "if it resides on the desktop without having to go into online banking to see it," Ley said. "We are going to look at how people like this and see what requests they may have."
For example, some early comments on PNC's Inside the Wallet blog (which, true to its name, is viewed from within the Virtual Wallet account) requested more detail, such as listing balances.
Hank Israel, a partner at Novantas LLC of New York, said that according to the firm's research, about 40% of bank customers are "control seekers," and would be potentially interested in a widget that gives them continuous information about their banking balances.
"They want to manage every penny, and they want to manage their finances at this level," Israel said.
Stessa Cohen, research director of banking industry advisory services at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn., said it's a smart move on PNC's part to extend a function it has already built into its Virtual Wallet rather than build entirely new applications.
Cohen also said it was important that the widget relies on Adobe Air, a common Web application development platform, because it was an inexpensive, accessible approach to building new functionality that works on multiple operating systems. "It is a common tool that is not banking-specific, and from an IT perspective it is easy to get people who know how to use these tools," she said.
Ron Shevlin, a senior analyst at Aite Group LLC of Boston, said that "widgetizing [the Money Bar] and breaking it off from the online tool itself becomes a nice convenience for folks who don't always want to log in to the site."
When it launched Virtual Wallet in 2008, PNC initially sought to target the Generation Y demographic, which PNC defines as people 18 to 34 years old.
Gen Y members tend to check their balances more frequently than other age groups, primarily to make sure they don't overdraw their bank accounts, Shevlin said. "An incredibly high percentage of [Gen Y] customers check balances before, after and during transactions," Shevlin said. "When they are about to swipe, they want to be sure the money is there."
Jegher said the tool "is a bit like 'Back to the Future' — back in the day, Internet banking was downloaded."
He said Money Bar Desktop has obvious applications for business users who need to see their cash positions in real time, but it was perhaps less clear for regular consumers, who do not handle all of their finances on a computer screen. "Folks do not always rely on a single device these days," Jegher said.
