twitter — Banking.com

Anti-Social Media Hacks

February 22, 2013 By Banking.com Staff 1 Comment

Burger King and Jeep have nothing to do with financial services. But both banking professionals and the customers they serve would be wise to keep a close eye on the fast-food retailer and the automaker as they seek to recover from high-profile hacks this week. It could just be a sign of things to come.

As has been widely reported, both companies this week had their Twitter accounts hacked and, in different ways, defaced. There’s already been wide speculation regarding the perpetrators, but at this point that’s almost less important than the fact that the hacks occurred at all. The primary motive seems to have been to cause mischief, but most such intrusions have a more malevolent intent.

The news of these high-profile Twitter hacks comes shortly after the granddaddy of social media, Facebook, revealed that it was the victim of a “a sophisticated attack. . .that occurred when a handful of employees visited a mobile developer website that was compromised.” Facebook didn’t identify the developer site in question, though it has been identified named elsewhere.

So what does all this have to do with banking?

The reality is that this where many aspects of the financial services industry are headed. And unlike fast food or even cars, this is a practice fundamentally built around private information that needs to be kept secure. The most recent data breaches make it clear that we’re far from that level of security.

Most institutions are already active in the social media sphere, but the current initiatives mainly revolve around marketing and messaging. It seems only a matter of time before at least a few brave organizations make the leap into trying to develop Facebook into a transaction platform and transmit private information via channels such as Twitter.

In some ways, it’s a throwback to the early days of the Internet. The Credit Union National Association reports that a third of all credit unions now offer mobile banking, and all of the rest will have joined the fray within the next two years. That’s nearly twice the adoption rate for online banking when it arrived, which means that we’re already entering the second generation of mobile banking capabilities.

When social media is thrown into the mix, as seems almost inevitable, the growth rate will likely be even more accelerated—there’s an entire generation primed to enter the workforce that has a problem remembering a time before these technologies were fully integrated into every aspect of daily life.

The question is not whether social media channels need to become more secure; the focus should be on how to make them more secure, and who should lead the effort. We already have best practices in place for consumers, but it’s fair to think few will heed the advice. It’s up to us.

There’s no single constituency that can do everything related to security. The banks, the social media providers, the government, commercial and technology vendors—everyone must be involved. We need expert working groups, industry standards and new technologies. And we need them now.

Filed Under Industry News, Social Media Tagged With Facebook, hack, social media, twitter

Intuit Financial Services’ Innovation Conference: Mobile Trends, Technology Transformation, and Personal & Small Business Finances

October 15, 2012 By Banking.com Staff 2 Comments

In early October, Intuit Financial Services hosted its annual user conference, the Intuit Innovation Conference, in Nashville, Tenn. The conference brought together industry leaders from banks and credit unions across the country, and discussed key topics affecting the financial services industry. To provide a broad spectrum on issues, Intuit hosted an array of esteemed keynote speakers included Steve Forbes, Chairman, CEO, and Editor in Chief at Forbes Media; Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO; and, Dan Ariely, behavioral economist and author.

The Banking.com staff got a chance to pull key tidbits from the event, which focused on mobile trends, technology transformation, and personal and small business finances. Below are some top tweets and highlights from the conference:

Mobile:

Tablet users touch their financial institution (FI) 30 times per month across multiple devices (tablet, phone and PC) not including text banking touches.
Smart phone remote deposit users deposit approximately 2+ checks per month at an average of more than $420 per deposit. Cost savings to FI – $3 each deposit over using a branch.
30% of customers now factor mobile solutions into why they choose their primary FI.
Average mobile phone user now spends 12 minutes/day on the actual “phone,” two hours/day doing other things.
Mobile is the primary way people interact with their FIs today and growing; mobile banking up 63% to 57 million in 2011.
10% of online banking users are now using their tablet.

Technology Transformation:

Web and mobile is eliminating intermediaries like traditional editorial process. Media model of last 150 years has been blasted away.
Mobile is changing the media model again. Everything in marketing must be customized to the individual. There are more specialized segments than ever before.
Contingent workforce will be 40% in few years (following passions, seeking work/life balance). This offers a new set of financial complexities that financial institutions will need to consider.
Digital trends shaping future behavior:
- World without borders
- Participatory networks
- Mobile first & only
- Humanizing the data
- Reputation rules
“The Digital channel has increased engagement 3x to 32 times/month” – Intuit Financial Services General Manager, CeCe Morken

Personal & Small Business:

2/3 of personal businesses don’t track their mileage for tax time or they track it incorrectly.
50% of small businesses use manual methods (pen paper) to manage finances.
Average value of personal business to an FI is $5,000 in revenue per year. Consumer value is $500.
Personal small business market segment is growing. Forecast is 32 million by 2018.
Personal businesses take longer to make buying decisions than consumers and larger businesses.
“74% of #smallbiz owners aren’t wowed by their FI”-Christine Barry of @AiteGroup

A recurring theme of the conference was mobile in the banking industry; how important is a mobile presence to you? Does your FI meet your needs with its mobile solutions? What do you expect from your FI’s when dealing with mobile? Leave us a comment below.

Filed Under Industry News, Social Media Tagged With #IFSNC, Intuit Financial Services, mobile, mobile banking, tablet banking, twitter

FI Spotlight: Vantage Credit Union

July 25, 2012 By Banking.com Staff 3 Comments

We got the chance to interview Eric Acree, executive vice president at Vantage Credit Union (VCU) about the TweetMyMoney program VCU launched in 2009. VCU was early to the social scene when they launched TweetMyMoney, the world’s first banking-by-Twitter service, on September 28, 2009. The service is available exclusively to Vantage members and is free of charge. With TweetMyMoney, members can monitor their account balances, deposits, withdrawals, holds and cleared checks with simple commands. Members can also transfer funds within their own account to different account types (checking to savings, checking to loans, etc.).

We chatted with Eric to learn more about the program:

Q: Where did the idea for the campaign come from, and how have you seen it grow over the past three years?

A: The idea for TweetMyMoney came out of an internal online brainstorming session between some technology staff and business staff (all participants were social media users as well). At that time, we did not have a ton of money available to hire a firm to create a mobile app, but we desperately wanted to provide something to our members. So, we were discussing possible ways to create a mobile banking solution for little money. There was much discussion on how we could possibly use SMS technology, which then led to ways to possibly use Facebook and Twitter. The Twitter platform provided the perfect opportunity for us and we were already familiar with it. Not everyone uses Twitter and not all Twitter users are comfortable using TweetMyMoney. So the growth of the service (when compared to more traditional/mass market mobile banking solutions) has been relatively small. However, we have several hundred members who use the service a lot, on a regular basis. It’s important to note that Vantage is currently developing more traditional mobile banking apps and plans to offer them to members late this summer. We will have a native mobile banking app for the iPhone, Android and iPad.

Q: What (if any) benefits do members receive from using TweetMyMoney versus SMS banking notifications?

A: There isn’t much difference between the two technologies since TweetMyMoney operates in a similar way to SMS. From a cost standpoint, using TweetMyMoney is a much cheaper option for Vantage since we did not have to invest money into a SMS infrastructure. For members who are Twitter users, the benefit is using a familiar technology to quickly and safely obtain information about their accounts. Obtaining information via TweetMyMoney is faster than using a web page (or even a mobile app) since TweetMyMoney does not require the same log-in steps.

Q: How have you addressed security concerns/questions around using Twitter to send and receive confidential banking information? Do you get many member inquiries about security concerns over using Twitter, or are they excited to have a new way to access financial information?

A: Like other technology innovations launched in the past, TweetMyMoney quickly generated a lot of passionate commentary and opinions in the technology blogosphere after we announced its launch. We have incorporated several security layers and measures to ensure it is safe to use. When members use TweetMyMoney, the information contained in their tweets, as well as the information sent back to them, is generic, e.g. transaction commands, dollar amounts, dates, account code types, etc. In fact, most of this type of information is sent to millions of people every day by virtually all financial institutions in the form of e-alerts. If a member’s Twitter account was somehow compromised, all a hacker would see is this generic information, which is useless to the hacker. The key point is: no account number, nor other sensitive personal or account information, is displayed in TweetMyMoney. All the sensitive information is kept safe at Vantage behind the online banking firewall. Vantage also implemented a new security feature called Correspondence Authentication Codes inside our online banking service. So, every outbound electronic communication originating from Vantage (including tweets from TweetMyMoney) contains a unique code for each day of the week, thus ensuring the message is authentic when the member recognizes their unique code. Members can view and change these codes from their user profile section of our online banking service. In summary, we have taken extraordinary steps to ensure TweetMyMoney is safe. We ran its design and security controls by an industry-leading firm that has an exceptional track record in their line of work. They provided an unbiased opinion and helped validate our approach before we launched TweetMyMoney. Just for the record, in the nearly three years of the TweetMyMoney service being live, we have experienced ZERO security problems. Not one single security breach of any kind has occurred with TweetMyMoney.

Q: Vantage CU is socially savvy, with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube channels. What platform do you see the most member engagement on? Are members more interested in interacting with Vantage CU via Twitter or Facebook?

A: We are active on our Twitter handle and Facebook page. Our YouTube channel has few subscribers and we plan to utilize this platform more in the future. But, we see the most engagement with our members via Twitter.

Q: Final thoughts before we wrap up this interview?

A: The real beauty of TweetMyMoney is we have devised a safe and innovative way to communicate important financial information via an unsecure social media network. TweetMyMoney was our first (and boldest) mobile banking step, but we are excited to be bringing the native mobile banking apps for iPhone, Android and iPad users later this summer.

Want to see more of TweetMyMoney? Check out VCU’s videos about the program or connect with VCU on Twitter.

Filed Under Financial Institution Spotlights Tagged With FI Spotlight, social media, twitter, Vantage Credit Union

Banking Industry Leaders Discuss Findings of Intuit Financial Management Survey

November 4, 2011 By Jim Marous Leave a Comment

*This blog was originally posted on Bank Marketing Strategy by Jim Marous. Jim is a marketing services leader focused on building strategic solutions for the financial services industry. You can follow him on Twitter @JimMarous or connect on LinkedIn.

In conjunction with the release of Intuit Financial Services’ 4th Annual Financial Management Survey, Banking.com hosted a Twitter Town Hall yesterday, bringing together financial industry leaders to discuss loyalty and channel migration as well as some of the challenges and opportunities facing the banking industry. The following is a recap of the very robust one hour dialogue. (The complete transcript can be found using #IFSsurvey on Twitter)

The Town Hall discussion began around the issue of customer loyalty and the finding that many consumers thought their financial provider was not ‘in touch’ with their needs. Given the events of the past week, where many large banks reversed decisions around the implementation of fees due to highly vocal negative sentiment amplified by social media and credit union trade group support, most participants believed that banks are not leveraging current insight and technology to make better decisions and provide value added service.

Tobin Lee (@Tobin_Lee), Intuit Financial Services spokesperson stated, “It is time for a banker mindset shift; cultivating deeper relationships, more meaningful engagement and stronger advocacy for growth”. Campbell Edlund from EMI (@EMI_mktg4sales) added, “These findings provide a very strong argument for a communications plan around the customer lifecycle”.

The already robust dialogue really took off as the discussion moved to the acceptance and utilization of banking channels (especially mobile and tablet banking). Bradley Leimer (@leimer) from Mechanics Bank in the San Francisco Bay area believed mobile strategy will be the key to future engagement due to the portability and ‘always on’ nature of the device. He also believed that the correlation between mobile banking and smartphone use (41% of respondents owned a smartphone) could indicate a lower engagement with financial technology in general for non-smartphone users.

Edlund added that while there is currently a higher penetration of smartphones than tablets, tablets can not be ignored by banks since Oracle found that tablet ownership is expected to increase significantly in the next year. She also warned that we need to be cautious not to get ahead of the acceptance curve. . . “we always underestimate inertia”. Brett King (@brettking), author of Bank 2.0 and founder of Movenbank went a step further stating that within 3 years all bank websites will need to be built for tablets first. He also believed that branches will continue to diminish in presence and utility (according to the study, 27% of respondents still visit their branch once a month in addition to ATM visits).

Mark Zmarzly (@BankMarketing) did not believe bricks and mortar would completely go away, but definitely felt the relevance of branches will change. “It’s easy to say branches will go away, but is that realistic? They have to evolve, but customers will never let them become 100% irrelevant.” King responded that with the drop in branch transactions, the economics of the branch are not working. I (@jimmarous) illustrated the model of Boeing Employees Credit Union in Seattle, where only 2 of the 40 branch network have tellers, while the installation of multiple ATMs at offices and around the city have an average of 10,000+ transactions each. 94% of the transactions at BECU are done electronically, according to Howie Wu (@howie_wu) from the credit union.

“Relevance is the key to banking for tomorrow,” stated King. “By 2015, mobile will be the #1 day-to-day channel, OLB #2 with the branch network being #5. The challenge for mobile and online will be developing great customer journeys”. King doesn’t believe these journeys exist today and believes the goal should be to have banking so pervasive that it is not tied to a branch, device or website, but is everywhere customers are.

Edlund pointed to the retail industry as a forerunner for what we will see in financial services. “Social and tablets will change the landscape in banking as they have in retailing”, Edlund stated. (During the Twitter Town Hall, there was even a discussion of the integration of TV as a channel for banking). Representatives from EMI in Boston (EMI_mktg4banks) emphasized that we will continue to see a blurring of all channels with social media providing some of the glue for enhanced communication. Gamification and location-based rewards were also seen as a key elements of engagement by Leimer and Edlund.

A conundrum was discussed with regard to the needs of small businesses where checks still prevail and the need for branches. King believed that we will see significant attention paid to mobile payments for businesses in the next couple years, while I added that tablet apps for business are also being developed to respond to the needs of the business community. NFC was also seen as a game changer with regard to the need for branches for small businesses. Bob Williams (@bob_williams) from Harland Clarke believed that, while check usage is definitely dropping, there are much greater efficiencies today than in the past with RDC and other electronic tools.

It was clear from the Intuit research that was just released, the Bank 2020 research released in April, and the discussion during the Twitter Town Hall today that there is significant disruption in the banking industry with regards to channel support and device utilization. The consumer movement to new banking channels is mirroring the movement to more sophisticated devices such as smartphones and tablets. Many consumers are NOT choosing one device or channel over another, but are using multiple devices depending on their personal needs.

Consumer desire for an integrated banking experience without friction will need to be supported by banking organizations in the future. Distribution networks (whether tangible or intangible) will need to support an expanding array of capabilities that may include integration within retail or social sites as opposed to standing alone.

As I stated to the participants of the Twitter Town Hall at the end of today’s discussion, “If banks are not prepared for the channel migration that is already underway, they may experience the impact of ‘Bank Transfer Decade’”.

Note: A summary of the findings of Intuit Financial Services’ 4th Annual Financial Management Survey and recently released related research is available in my previous Bank Marketing Strategy blog post.

If you weren’t able to join us, what are your thoughts around the impact of channel shift away from the branches and towards other media? Will we see the elimination of branches completely? Will another device or technology unseat smartphones and tablets?

Leave us a comment below, or Tweet at the author @JimMarous.

Filed Under Social Media, Surveys Tagged With #IFSsurvey, Banking 2020, banks, credit unions, Intuit Financial Services, survey, twitter

Intuit Financial Services’ Innovation Conference: Mobile Trends, Technology Transformation, and Personal & Small Business Finances

Banking Industry Leaders Discuss Findings of Intuit Financial Management Survey

Subscribe

News Feed

Blogroll