The survey recently carried out by Jupiter Financial services seems to indicate that Internet users' financial accounts are on the way to becoming consolidated online.

Should the results of this survey be confirmed, online broking web sites that are not backed by a bank would find it increasingly difficult to fight against multifaceted competitors and the same would also be true for banks with a single channel.

Indeed, this survey indicates that 45% of US consumers who already use online financial services would be willing to have their different accounts (online brokerage, bank, credit, insurance) managed by a single institution.

And yet, 55% of the respondents are against such idea:

- 18% fear that this single financial institution might fail.

- 11% fear they would be even more approached by this single institution, as it would try and sell them new products.

- 11% think that it would require too much effort to have their accounts transferred.

- 8% refuse a single financial institution, as it would know too much about them.

- 7% do not want a single financial institution for different other reasons.

At a time when we might be tempted to think that the "all-in-one" could become "the" only online solution, French financials no longer believe in…online virtual banking.

Dexia refuses to keep on financing and developing Zebank.com, thus forcing Bernard Arnault to look for a new partner, BNP Paribas decides to slow down banquedirecte.fr development, not to mention Fortis and the failure of ebanking.com.

Online brokers live in the same constant state of anxiety…

The solution to all this might well be a single financial institution: bank-insurer-broker.

And yet, this will only be an option for the biggest financial groups…but they first need to believe in it!

As far as I am concerned, I believe that it was a basic mistake to create purely virtual banks as Internet users are becoming more and more demanding and wish to be able to use online and offline indiscriminately.

Indeed, why separate all virtual and offline in the case of an already existing big bank?

Of course, it was only possible to pay a 4, or even 5% interest rate to the customers of virtual entities as it was out of the question to offer the same type of service to the other customers of the offline network.

And yet, these banks with a brand that proves well established, and reassuring…would have been well advised to take advantage of their position to play the on/offline synergy.

Instead of which, some of them created independent virtual entities along with new ebrands (with the marketing expenses that it entails) and what is more, they pay the accounts a 5% interest rate.

Another big mistake was that, at a time when some banks pay their online customers, customers from the offline network have to pay a financial fee to access their online accounts!!!

Such a contradictory approach could only lead to the results that can presently be observed and before some banks finally understand that Internet users must be able to access their account free of charge so that this online section can really start expanding, there still is a long way to go…

Between you and me, a customer who makes most of his operations online instead of coming to the bank counter, doesn't it improve the bank working cost?

In this case, why should banks prevent this automatic margin improvement by charging online access fees to their customers?

This is a mystery I have not been able to understand yet…

Source : Jupiter

Today, online mortgage market only represents 2% of all UK mortgage sales, which represents £3 billion.

According to Forrester Research, this figure could well reach £15 billion by 2006, provided that all the possibilities offered by the web are fully used to offer "dynamic" products.

According to Forrester Research, dynamic credit would be the only promising online solution to reach young, educated and high-income customers.

Dynamic credit can be defined as a single credit, with flexible size and term, which comes together a variable interest.

This type of credit should then allow borrowers to better manage their credits, as it will give them more control and more choice.

Forrester believes that this could help customise visitors who prove more and more difficult to reach, but it could also put an end to the permanent margin erosion of financial firms that only compete with each other in terms of interest rates now, as imagination does not prevail any more.

Anyway, Forrester is convinced that only a few innovative banks will set up this type of product in the UK.

And finally, the research company specifies that these innovative banks should, thanks to this type of offer, take the lead and building societies, that is to say the offline world, will find it extremely difficult to catch up with them.

Source : Forrester.co.uk