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One clue to where banks will be placing their Internet banking bets in 2011 can be found in Geezeo's pipes.
January 1
The popularity of online personal financial management is influencing overall web banking design, as institutions build new portals that marry account information, balances, automated statements and recent activity with digital transaction capabilities.
Santander has just finished a re-launch of its websites globally that features a secure login that gives customers access to all their accounts in a single location, combined with information on executed payments, recent transactions and approaches to certain balance thresholds.
This data can then be used by the consumer to inform additional action, such as payments and transfers, which can be executed directly from the same page.
"Consumers can see their total financial picture, including mortgage, credit cards, and accounts," says Matthew Timms, electronic commerce director at Santander.
The new site was developed internally by the $1.5 trillion-asset bank's international IT team after the bank conducted consumer research that included focus groups and testing of prototype sites to gather information on the navigation tendencies, transaction capabilities and types of data users prefer, and where features should appear on the site.
"Most customers tend to rate their service from the bank higher if they can be empowered to manage their own banking relationships," Timms says.
As a result of the research, Timms' team placed account information in close proximity to transaction verification, statements, and transaction functions. The site also includes a secure messaging service to allow consumers to contact the bank online with service queries in real time. In addition, customers will be able to view two years' worth of transaction history and build a seven-year library of their statements in digital form. Non-customer visitors are greeted with a page that displays deals and promotions, information on rates, car loans and insurance, credit card offers and links to online account opening and other services.
Security has also been upgraded as part of the redesign. Customers verify themselves at login with image and phrase verification, which combines passwords with an image that will only appear on Santander's site, in an attempt to guard against phishing attacks. It's also deploying one-time out-of-band messages to verify higher risk transactions.
