In April visitors to chase.com, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s online banking site, found an eye-popping offer on their screens: Pay a bill electronically and collect $5. Pay your bills online for three months and pocket up to $150.
The response was electrifying. J.P. Morgan Chase, which already had more than 2 million customers banking online, attracted at least 20,000 new accounts in April, market researchers estimate.
"Our offer created a tremendous buzz," says J.P. Morgan Chase executive vice president Yawar Shah. "These services enable us to wow customers in ways that I've never seen before in this industry."
也许J.P.摩根追逐不应该这么惊讶。纽约市巨型纽约银行难以单独攻击其在线计划 - 或引发这种需求。2001年2月，伯明翰，阿拉巴马州的Amsouth Bancorp推出了电子账单支付的承诺，即它将免费生命;在接下来的三个月里，客户每天1,000率注册，以前的十倍。和去年美国银行公司决定消除其每月的电子账单付款人的5.95美元。自群以来，超过300万客户已植入2011年，这是世界上有600万活跃的在线客户。
Price cuts and giveaways to spur online activity? Are these banks engaged in some latter-day Internet insanity -- a throwback landgrab for market share with little hope of ever turning a profit? Quite the opposite, to hear them, and their competitors, talk. Many bankerswere一旦陷入了新的经济兴奋，创造了独立的网络运营，如银行一股公司的臭名昭着的Wingspanbank.com。今天，他们将网上银行视为综合零售方案的重要组成部分，营销渠道，巧妙地管理，并具有比尔支付等增强，可以给他们一个关键的竞争对手。
“也许我们最大的竞争优势在于我们在线实力，”FleetboSton金融公司的总裁兼首席运营官宣布，德国·麦克斯顿金融公司总裁兼首席运营官，该措施可能是世界上最成功的主要银行，在网上携带客户：72％它的530万零售客户已注册使用Fleet.com。
这个行业,零售银行业务thriving, the beneficiary of both low interest rates that spurred record mortgage refinancings and the newfound caution of investors, who, wary of stocks postbubble, are parking their money in bank CDs, annuities and other safe investments. And online services -- from commercial banking giants like BofA to niche players like the 175,000-member Digital Federal Credit Union in Marlborough, Massachusetts -- are boosting banks' efficiency, marketing prowess and, most critically, their profitability.
Why? Online activities are cheaper, for one. Industry researchers and consultants estimate that the average online transaction costs a bank about 20 cents, versus $2.30 if handled by a call-center operator and $3.35 by a branch teller. Even automated teller machine withdrawals, at 25 cents, are more expensive.
But it's not just cost reduction. Bankers say that once clients go online with their basic checking accounts, they tend to maintain bigger balances, use more services and stay loyal to the institution longer than off-line customers. That all adds up to a healthier bottom line.
"We are telling the marketplace and investors that we intend to grow revenues in our consumer franchise 7 to 9 percent a year and earnings per share 10 percent, and they want to know if that's sustainable. Online banking is a big part of the story," says Barbara Desoer, president of consumer products at BofA, whose consumer bank boosted profits 10 percent in the first half, to $3.5 billion. "The question is, how will we differentiate ourselves? We believe we have a head start and a competitive edge."
Online banking has long had an obvious allure. The Internet is an ideal medium for financial services -- a business that revolves around digital data and high-speed communications and that can operate at least as effectively, and far more economically, when it minimizes its dependence on people and offices. But Web finance, like all things Internet, was overhyped and oversold -- particularly online brokerage and trading. Financial institutions did bring millions of customers online, but many of their freestanding e-ventures, such as Wingspanbank and Citigroup's E-Citi, failed to turn profits and, as the boom fizzled, were folded back into the companies' main business units.
New Economy business plans may have been shelved, but consumer demand for convenience grew apace. "Banking is like bread and butter -- something people need every day," says Lloyd Darlington, president and CEO of technology solutions at BMO Financial Group, the Toronto-based parent of BMO Bank of Montreal and of Harris Bankcorp in Chicago. "They're always going to need a place to put their money, a term [savings] deposit, credit, a way to send money to other people. None of that is cyclical."
Those needs increasingly can be met by online services. "Our customers are demanding more convenience and control over their financial affairs," says J.P. Morgan Chase's Shah, who heads regional banking operations including the Internet, ATMs and call centers. "We are listening actively and responding to those desires increasingly via the online channel."
在线市场很大，其潜力是巨大的。根据Chermactham的说法，马萨诸塞州的塔群，大约3000万美国家庭在线银行。这是6900万有互联网访问的43％ - 征准有多少房间成长。根据Reston，弗吉尼亚州的ComScore网络，电子账单支付已成为增长最快的Web服务，拍卖和约会之一。但只有700万客户正在使用他们的网上银行账户支付账单，这意味着银行只开始划伤该表面。
比较网络使用另一个电子服务,utomated teller machines, gives a clear indicator of the potential for Internet banking, says Matthew Lawlor, CEO of McLean, Virginiabased Online Resources Corp., which provides outsourcing support to small and medium-size institutions.
“我们自1映射网上银行的发展996 against the growth of ATMs that began in 1980, and the adoption curves are almost identical," says Lawlor. After six years, both were at about 20 percent. "That tells me we're well on the way to mainstream adoption -- today more than 70 percent of checking account customers use ATMs." ATMs, of course, merely revolutionized retail banking.
同时增长前景不会激动银行家 - 这是潜在的盈利能力。尽管取得了明显的成功，但大家银行都没有出现明确的在线活动的盈利声明。一个原因是他们喜欢以完全综合的业务管理和描绘他们的零售业务。
"Our customers see us as one brand, not separate businesses," explains Richard Kovacevich, chairman, president and CEO of Wells Fargo.
Thus, San Franciscobased Wells Fargo doesn't break its online results out from those of its consumer bank -- even as it boasts that it was the first major U.S. bank to open up on the Internet, in 1995, and now ranks second to BofA, with 4.2 million active users, 38 percent of its customer base. Similarly, there is no profit-and-loss statement for bankofamerica.com, or for Citigroup's citibank.com or Bank One's bankone.com.
But Kovacevich and his industry peers insist that online customers are profitable, and in many cases far more so than the average client. Therefore, the more that go online, the better for the bottom line.
Charlotte, North Carolinabased BofA has been the most forthcoming with per-account data. It says that an online customer's profitability begins to surpass that of an ordinary client after one year of enrollment; by the 31st month the e-customer is 21 percent more profitable. With 37 percent of BofA's retail households classified as active users -- going online at least once every 90 days -- the bottom-line impact surely adds up.
"The key to the profitability of retail relationships is deposit and loan balances, and online customers' balances are significantly higher," notes BofA consumer products chief Desoer. Her average online customer's loan and deposit balances are 45 percent and 35 percent higher, respectively, than off-line users', she says.
BofA also confirms that Internet clients cost less to serve because they are self-sufficient. They visit branches less frequently than the off-line clientele, and they place 30 percent fewer calls to telephone centers. They also tend to be more satisfied than other customers and less likely to take their business elsewhere.
银行磨损率并不比在线披露更加透明，但至少10％的客户在典型的一年中关闭他们的账户。两年前的井法戈透露，其银行流失率为14％。在网上客户中，速度为7％，又为其120万电子账单支付者再次。美国银行表示，它超过260万条票据支付客户关闭账户，占平均率。
"In measuring payback from these systems, the greatest value is in retaining customers," says Lehman Brothers large-cap bank analyst Brock Vandervliet. "When they add products like online bill-paying, users become increasingly reluctant to change banks. And when banks reduce customer churn rates, consumer banking becomes more profitable."
At FleetBoston, online customers' attrition rate is said to be one third that of unwired clients, and their deposit levels are two to three times higher. "The behavioral characteristics of online users are vastly superior," says COO McQuade.
Selective disclosures are all that analysts have to go on. But Alenka Grealish, manager of the banking group at Boston-based research firm Celent Communications, says that BofA's numbers are especially impressive: They are based not on a random statistical sampling but on an extensive time-series analysis of 300,000 accounts, dating back more than three years. "The results are pretty profound," says Grealish. "They show causality."
Indeed, these findings have since been reinforced by independent research. Boston Consulting Group used data from 20 of the 30 largest U.S. banking companies early this year to conclude that an active online customer is 33 percent more profitable than the average off-line customer, while an active electronic bill-paying client is 98 percent more profitable. In just the first year of enrollment, a bank's income from an online customer improves 20 percent, while its income from an online bill-payer goes up 40 percent.
In a recent study of 11 top banks, ComScore found that bill payers' average deposit balance was $4,800, double that of online customers who didn't use the bill-paying feature.
Analysts are curious, though not troubled, about banks' reluctance to reveal a complete online P&L. Banks, after all, routinely break out details on other retail segments, notably credit cards. But Lehman's Vandervliet says he accepts the common argument that "online banking has become one more delivery channel, alongside but not replacing branches and ATMs."
J.P. Morgan Chase's Shah, who declines to provide hard data about chase.com's performance, acknowledges that he has -- and he assumes his competitors have -- far deeper cost and profitability analyses than those BofA has made public. Besides not wanting to tip his strategic hand, Shah insists that J.P. Morgan Chase stay on message. "Online is part of the offering, not这offering," he says. "We have a strong interest in moving customers into that channel, but this is a multichannel business."
尼古拉斯Viner，副总裁兼波士顿咨询公司的全球支付实践总监：“直观地和逻辑上，您知道技术与盈利之间存在良好的联系。但你可能永远无法证明它。”
证明它需要银行支付和分配他们的所有客户的交易和各种交付渠道的交易 - 这将是一个会计噩梦，违反单品牌多通道原则。
"Customers want it all -- automated banking machines, interactive voice response, live representatives over the phone, and, of course, branches -- so we have to take a holistic view," says BMO Financial Group's Darlington. "We got dazzled by the technology at first, and we learned a lesson."
Even the Internet-only start-ups of the bubble period -- those few that have survived -- learned that online banking couldn't stand alone. Egg, a spin-off of London-based insurer Prudential, boasts 3 million customers and is the most successful branchless bank in the world; last year its U.K. operations earned £35 million ($55 million). It makes its money not on prosaic deposit-taking services but rather on higher-margin add-ons, such as credit cards, a mutual fund supermarket and discount brokerage. Atlanta-based NetBank, with 163,000 customers, broke even in retail banking last year but earned $14 million from mortgage lending -- the result of its 2000 acquisition of Resource Mortgage Bancshares Group, which diversified its income stream and provided a ready outlet for the bank's deposits.
事实上，大多数零售客户都没有失去他们对分支机构的热爱。例如，在加拿大皇家银行，95％的零售交易在皇家银行父母多伦多的RBC财务集团销售副总裁Anne Lockie表示，包括网上和ATM。然而，十分之一的客户至少每隔一季度访问分支机构。其中包括许多银行的240万英寸客户，总零售基地的22％为1100万。
"Obviously," says Lockie, "we haven't been able to close 95 percent of our branches. The channels work together, and we have to invest in all of them. We wouldn't have attracted these customers in the first place if we didn't offer a variety of ways to deal with us."
The importance of branch networks is often overlooked, says Carl Rutstein, the Chicago-based head of Boston Consulting's Americas payments practice: "We've analyzed internal data across all the major banks, and even the heaviest of online transactors use branches frequently."
J.P. Morgan Chase's Shah notes that banks have not been able to reallocate their costs as quickly as customer behavior has changed. "Certainly, the steady-state cost of the online channel is lower than others," he says. "The question is, Are we appropriately realigning the cost structure? It's not about closing branches. It's about distributing our resources more effectively."
NetBank chairman and CEO Douglas Freeman maintains that online banking profitability will always be somewhat opaque because the industry giants want it that way. Freeman, a former retail executive at both BofA and Wells Fargo, says that those companies are loath to admit that retail profit margins will be constrained without wholesale reductions in the branch networks that they claim are so valuable. BofA, for instance, is adding 200 branches a year, having concluded that branches are essential to capturing market share.
“我们正在运行一个3美元- -assets, $2.25 billion-in-deposits bank with 140 employees," says Freeman, who estimates that at least three fourths of a major bank's retail expenses go into the branch infrastructure. "A $3 billion branch bank would have to have 1,000 to 2,000 people -- the branch banking model has huge costs." But that hasn't turned big banks' online customers off; BofA adds as many in a month as NetBank serves -- 163,000.
Online Resources' Lawlor believes that the ability to profit online -- to attain the critical mass of customers that takes an electronic banking platform past the break-even point -- does not depend on size. Citing his own analysis of big-bank disclosures, the performance of institutions served by Online Resources and what he says are conservative assumptions about fixed overhead, improved attrition rates and cross-selling revenues, Lawlor says, "The typical bank will break even when 15 percent of its customers are online."
Most strategists aren't satisfied with that level. Says J.P. Morgan Chase's Shah: "My definition of critical mass is when the vast majority of customers are active users. As a bank, and as an industry, we are not there yet."
AS LONG AS ITS SIGHTS ARE ON ELECTRONIC bill-paying, the industry is on the right track, says Boston Consulting's Rutstein. He views J.P. Morgan's $150 giveaway as a smart investment: "The more that customers use the service -- the more payees they have -- the stickier they'll be, with higher loan balances, generating much higher fees."
By that standard, BofA's decision to make bill-paying free should pay off handsomely. The bank has tripled its number of online bill-payers since the end of 2001, to 15 percent of its checking account base.
BofA remains an exception, however. "The median top-20 bank has 4 percent of its checking customers doing bill payment," says Boston Consulting's Rutstein. He reckons that a large bank that increases its bill-paying penetration rate from 5 percent to 15 percent will pick up enough incremental income and market share to boost its market capitalization by $1 billion.
The public is willing: Stamford, Connecticutbased research firm Gartner predicts that U.S. online bill-payers will increase 38 percent this year, to 40 million. But the majority aren't going through their banks; they view their invoices at billers' Web sites, which don't charge for the convenience.
“这是一个至少在近期的开放机会，”Bofa消费者产品首席Desoer说。“我们知道我们最终会击中墙，”她补充道，因为不是每个家庭都与互联网相连，并非所有人都将采用网上银行。“但我们迄今为止，我们只讨论了消费者市场。我们希望在进入其他部分之前达到这一点，如小型商业和私人银行，那里还有巨大的潜力。”
“将此想到作为一种进化，”J.P. Morgan Chase的Shah说。“呼叫中心曾经是新的;现在我们也没有我们的客户可以在没有它们的情况下获得。互联网正在达到同样的阶段。我尚未宣布胜利。但我们比我们一年或两年更接近它。“