A small Massachusetts savings bank has become the first financial institution in New England to post information about its services on the vast web of computer networks known as the Internet.
Salem Five Cents Savings Bank, an $800 million-asset institution based in Salem, Mass., put about 30 pages of information about itself on the multimedia-capable annex of the Internet known as the World Wide Web.
The informational site will include data on mortgage and installment loans, the bank's interest rates, and even the history of the bank and the town of Salem.
Posting information on the Web, as it is commonly called, has become popular among banks as a low-risk way of easing into computer-based and electronic services. Nearly 30 banks have made that move, according to William H. Mitchelson, chairman and chief executive officer of Salem Five.
Salem Five's diminutive size points up the egalitarian nature of doing business on the Internet. Small banks increasingly believe that the evolving on-line banking arena gives them an opportunity to compete more effectively with larger banks.
"You don't have to be much of a futurist to see" that electronic transactions will predominate, Mr. Mitchelson said. These technologies offer "a great equalizer," he added, for banks like Salem Five that are trying to compete with much larger rivals.
Mr. Mitchelson said the bank did no research to determine how many of its roughly 27,000 customer households were computer or Internet users. He added, however: "All we know is, 200,000 new customers sign on with America Online every month," referring to the Internet access provider.
Salem Five has been trying to blaze a trail in home banking as well as in on-line services.
It and Comerica Inc. were the first two institutions to sign on with Interactive Transactions Partners, a joint venture of Electronic Data Systems Corp., U S West, and France Telecom that promises to help banks offer home banking and bill payment services.
