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What We’re Reading: Small Business Banking, Mobile Growth and Social Media

May 6, 2013 By Banking.com Staff 6 Comments

Below are interesting stories the Banking.com staff has been reading over the past week. What have you been reading? Let us know in the comments section below or Tweet @bankingdotcom.

 

  • Small Business Owners to Banks: Meet My Needs

American Banker

Small businesses want banks to add more of a personal touch. Nearly a quarter of owners of companies with less than $10 million in annual revenue want their bank to make adjustments to meet their individual needs, according to a survey published Monday by U.S. Bank (USB). More than 20% of small businesses owners also want their banks to make more money available and to connect them with other small business owners. A fifth of those who participated in the study want their bank to serve as a financial mentor, according to the fourth edition of the Small Business Annual Survey.

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  • Using Big Data to Fight Phishing

Bank Info Security

Using so-called big data to develop phishing intelligence systems that can connect e-mail attacks to specific criminal activities and groups over time is a good way to thwart targeted schemes, researcher Gary Warner of the University of Alabama at Birmingham says during an interview with Information Security Media Group. Rather than relying on e-mail signatures to filter out spam, Warner says organizations should rely on the e-mail data and statistics they collect. “We need to do more proper analysis of the log data,” he says.

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  • Mobile Growing, But Still Not Preferred Channel

Bank Systems & Technology

Jason Malo, a research director in the CEB TowerGroup’s Retail Banking and Cards practice, reported that the majority of mobile bankers use the channel for alerts, with occasional transactional capability. According to a recent TowerGroup survey of mobile banking consumers, 54% said the most important mobile function to them was being able to receive notification from their bank about irregular account activity or changes to their account. That was followed by 51% who reported their most important mobile function was bill pay capabilities, while 46% listed notification of low account balance as the function they most wanted from mobile banking. 43% of respondents listed remote deposit capture capabilities as what they most desired from the mobile channel.

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  • Banks plot major shrinking of branches

Crain’s New York Business

To cut costs bankers say hello to banking’s brave, new, cramped world. At about 1,000 square feet, [a new prototype branch is] 75% smaller than the traditional Wells Fargo outpost upstairs. Driven by changing consumer behavior and the urgent need to reduce costs, banks are devising ways to cut their branches down to size. Wells Fargo opened its first next-generation branch in April in Washington, D.C., and is looking to open seriously shrunken branches in New York and other major cities. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has started building branches that are 25% smaller than older models.

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  • A New Social Media Platform For Advisors

Financial Advisor Magazine

The progress of social media is inexorable and inevitable. Yet many financial advisors are still trying to figure out how to play the game without getting into hot water with regulators. Finect, a New York City company, has recently rolled out an online platform aimed specifically at the financial services industry. The company believes it can help financial advisors meet their professional and compliance needs in the social media era. “Financial advisors are tiptoeing around social media and are looking for help to move forward,” says Jennifer Openshaw, Finect’s president.

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  • In-Branch Tablet Banking Kiosks: Ideas, Opportunities and Costs

Financial Brand

The introduction of the iPad brought with it a whole new world of marketing opportunities for banks and credit unions. What are some examples of things bank and credit union marketers are currently doing with tablet kiosks? Jon VanderMeer, CEO/Kiosk & Display: The capabilities for kiosks and tablets is about 99% the same, only the form factor is different. Potential tablet uses include: In-branch demos, training and troubleshooting, onboarding new customers into online banking, and digital alternative to printed brochures where branch visitors can review and compare products.

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  • Financial Pain Ensues When Custodians of Health Fail to be Good Stewards of Privacy

Javelin Strategy & Research Blog

The healthcare industry stores massive amounts of PII, and it is incumbent on them to protect that data from theft. According to Javelin research, approximately 1 in 9 data breach victims in 2010 were fraud victims – this correlation grew to 1 in 4 as of 2012! Social Security numbers are the keys to the castle when it comes to financial accounts.  In our 2013 Banking Identity Safety Scorecard, 80% of the institutions examined still allowed consumers to authenticate themselves with SSNs.

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  • Mobile Remote Deposit Capture and More Convenient Banking

Main Street

Mobile remote deposit capture (MRDC) has become banking technology’s must have for 2013. But MRDC is just the beginning of how the camera changes banking. Next up: picture bill pay. It works like this: You get a bill. You could input biller data – account numbers, addresses, all those details – into online banking. Or you could snap a picture of the bill and let the software – developed by the same folks who created MRDC – populate a payment form with all that information that has been harvested from the bill.

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  • Banking by Voice Gets Test From U.S. Bank

The Street

Smartphone users are just getting used to issuing voice demands to make phone calls, get directions or ask for dining-out options. Now mobile phone users may be getting another audible option: using voice commands to conduct personal banking. U.S. Bank is testing a voice-banking service that enables customers to check account balances, review transactions and pay bills solely through voice activation. For now, U.S. Bank is limiting the app test campaign to its FlexPerks Travel Rewards program and to its employees; the voice-activated technology comes from Nuance Nina Mobile, and is now limited to iPhone and Android phones.

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Filed Under Industry News Tagged With big data, cybersecurity, mobile, mobile banking, small business, what we're reading

Greater Privacy Regulation For Children Online Will Impact Data Collection

October 18, 2012 By Tristan Hugo-Webb Leave a Comment

*This post originally appeared on Payments Journal

In the coming weeks, federal regulators from the Federal Trade Commission are expected to outline new rules which will make collecting information from children’s online activities much more difficult without parental consent. Mary Engle, the associate director of the advertising practices division at the Commission states, “Today, almost every child has a computer in his pocket and it’s that much harder for parents to monitor what their kids are doing online, who they are interacting with, and what information they are sharing.” She continues, “The concern is that a lot of this may be going on without anybody’s knowledge.”

The current federal rule, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, has become outdated due to new technological advances, say privacy advocate groups, despite the rule mandating the need for websites to obtain parental permission to collect sensitive personal information from children under 13. For example, under the existing rule, no regulation existed monitoring the use of webcams and online photography. However, regulators are expected to mandate that companies seeking children under 13 to submit photos of themselves online would require parental consent.

Generation Z children are the most computer and Internet literate generation in history, and with new technologies and applications continually produced that involve the exchange of personal information, privacy rules are vital. While no one is debating the importance of maintaining the safety of children, both online and offline, the new rules could potentially have a substantial effect on the payment industry, particularly for firms involved in the collection of information and social media websites.

The growing number of Generation Z online users means that the market represents a potential goldmine for online realtors and marketers. The new rules, however, will likely change the ability of firms to accurately target and market their goods and services for the teen and pre-teen markets online. While the added security in the new regulations will provide for children is important, it will slow the growth and development of payment-related technologies for this emerging demographic.

Tristan Hugo-Webb is an analyst with the Mercator Advisory Group covering the international market and U.S. debit card market. His responsibilities include covering new U.S. and international legislative regulations and analyzing their impact on the payment industry in the U.S. and around the world. Tristan is also a frequent contributor to Payments Journal, writing on a series of payments industry issues.

Tristan is a graduate of Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ, with a BS in Diplomacy and International Relations and Minors in Economics and French. He has spent several years living abroad including stays in Italy, Germany and Niger.

 

Filed Under Industry News Tagged With big data, data, data privacy, gen y, gen z, mercator

Big Data: The Link From Dinosaurs to Batman to Small Business

August 15, 2012 By Stephen O'Grady Leave a Comment

It’s hard to escape the hype around big data these days. From magazines to newspapers to TV, discussions of big data are everywhere. But for the average business or software developer, what does big data mean? What is its promise or potential? The answer depends on the business.

For Google, Facebook and others, big data is intelligence and revenue rolled into one. In cases like the British Museum, it’s about preserving and making freely available a corpus of better than 150 million assets, from maps to musical scores. But even the smallest businesses can begin to use data in new and creative ways.

Consider the case of seasonal retail businesses, such as hardware stores. In years past, store owners manually managed inventory, attempting to anticipate demand for their wares. Today, forward-looking businesses incorporate big data into that decision-making process.

Some turn to predictive algorithms, which are primed with years of inventory data to render better, more accurate projections of demand. Others factor freely available weather data into their inventory predictions. When long-term drought conditions are forecast, as they were prior to this spring, intelligent hardware store owners could lower their inventory of garden hoses and sprinklers and stock the parts necessary for deeper wells that may be dug.

And it goes far beyond internal or general sources, such as weather data. Two years ago the New York Times examined Netflix data to determine which movies were being rented, by neighborhood, in a dozen cities. If you were an entrepreneur looking to open a comic book store, knowing where the fans lived for movies like “Batman Begins,” “Captain America” or “Thor” would be invaluable. Or if you were opening a cooking supply store, planning your location and marketing around which boroughs were consumed by Julie and Julia could be a real competitive advantage.

The nonprofit sector can also benefit from big data. U.S. government census data, made available via the open API at www.census.gov, offers insights on poverty and homelessness. The Cornell Program on Applied Demographics, for example, uses the API to layer poverty statistics onto a map. From there, a savvy nonprofit could turn to the ProgrammableWeb’s collection of nonprofit APIs to tap into databases of potential volunteers.

Whatever the business and whatever the industry, there are datasets – some of them very large indeed – that can help make better decisions faster. The key to effectively using big data is to think creatively about how it can be leveraged. Consultants or contractors won’t necessarily see the same possibilities that you will. But keep an open mind, and big data will more than justify its hype.

*This post originally appeared on the Intuit Network.

About Stephen O’Grady: Stephen is an industry analyst and cofounder of RedMonk. He is based in Maine, a frequent traveler, ardent RedSox fan and focused on helping companies understand developers better and, in general, helping developers do what they do best. He is a paid contributor to the Intuit Network.

Filed Under Industry News Tagged With API's, big data, financial data, Intuit, small business