I recently had a chance to catch up with a former colleague of mine, who’s now CEO of Facilitas, which recently launched findabetterbank.com.
It’s a pretty nifty tool. It walks the user through a five-step process, asking about location, types of accounts/banks to include (e.g., Internet-only, student accounts), account feature preferences, and fee preferences. The site then presents the user with a listing of banks based on those preferences, which can be sorted by fees, percent of desired features met, closest branch location, or number of locations within a specified range.
Site visitors can click on any bank listed and see details about account features, fees, bank contact info, and a Google map of the nearest branch location.
Neat stuff. But what will ultimately differentiate this site from anything else will be Facilitas’ ability to let site visitors execute the switching of their accounts from their current bank to a new one, using the capabilities it has developed over the past couple of years (go here for a beta demonstration).
A few years ago, I met with the then-CEO of bankrate.com and suggested to her that the future of sites like bankrate was in the transaction, not the advertising. What I meant was that I thought it would be a whole lot more valuable to banks (Bankrate’s customers) to deliver a customer, and not just eyeballs and clicks. This is the vision that Facilitas is looking to deliver on.
But granted, today, it’s still a very small player compared to the millions of hits that bankrate.com gets. But banks and credit unions should still pay attention. Here’s why:
1. Customer data. If Facilitas can succeed at driving traffic to its site, the info that it will collect about customer account and fee preferences should prove to be an invaluable marketing tools for banks and credit unions.
2. Competitive data. A number of banks have tried to present competitor comparisons on their sites. It takes a lot of work to maintain that competitive information, and banks risk presenting outdated competitive information. Facilitas helps to overcome that problem.
3. Site design. I think there’s an opportunity to widgetize findabetterbank, and embed it into a bank’s or CU’s web site enabling a truly objective comparison of its accounts against the competition. I might not go as far as providing a map to my competitors’ branches, but providing objective guidance is a great way to being seen as a customer advocate. If you think this approach doesn’t work, talk to Progressive Insurance.
Having said that, there are a few things I’d say to Facilitas before I would incorporate the tool on my site (if I worked at a bank or CU):
- Spiff up the interface. The functionality of the tool is great, and the ability to get more details on fees and see “what’s missing” from desired account features is great. But the interface has a Web 1.0 kind of look and feel to it, and moving back and forth between steps in the process (after going through it the first time) is a little kludgy.
- Improve output features. After selecting a particular bank, it’s easy to print out the info for that bank. But printing out, or saving to a file, the comparison chart isn’t available. Personally, it’s the comparison chart I’d want to walk into a bank branch with.
Technorati Tags: Marketing, Banking, Facilitas, Find A Better Bank
Interesting. There was a similar project about 8 years ago in the Canadian credit union system to try and create a 1-click switch mechanism, but it couldn’t get off the ground due to regulations. Ended up going manual way with Davis and Henderson (a CDN cheque provider) doing the leg work. I have to wonder though how online security and fears of identity theft will figure into the switching side of things. No way you’d catch me giving up my personal information to some third-party. A bank or CU I can trust, some other firm — not me. Maybe ’cause Americans are used to having their personal data spread about on the web they’re more comfortable with the idea.
Ron,
Fascinating site – I ran it based on where I live and what I want from a financial and it worked pretty well. Thanks for posting about it – I’d never find stuff like this if it weren’t for guys like you.
Thanks Ron. We also believe that consumers are better prospects for banks when they choose that bank using an unbiased apples-to-apples comparison tool.
We’re working on a more “web 2.0″ version and improving the output capabilities. We’re also adding (in March) the ability to compare interest rates and information about linked savings and money market accounts.
Hi Ron
Man, i love your blog. I haven’t been by in a while, but the last three posts just had me nodding and laughing. Right on, sir.
I have a client who has just started a service for CPAs to offer plans to their clients (the consumer) for a self-directed 401k — where you have checkbook control, so in addition to stocks, bonds, mutual funds, you can buy real estate, or invest in a startup, or buy a franchise. I just set one up personally to invest in a startup. I love having that kind of control that used to reside in the hands of my discount brokerage. He targets the professional advisor, not the consumer, but he did a whitepaper/overview and posted it at his site: http://www.mybusiness401k.com and it is a helpful primer for learning about this topic.
The reason i mention him is not some indiscriminate pimping of his site, but because he is interested and has been approached by several banks about creating a branch or subsidiary of a bank to target this market of folks wanting to control their own retirement. And he would be directly effected by such a site — but his rationale and strategy would mirror a lot of what you’ve said or implied.
I’m rambling a bit, but the main thing is that in just a few short posts, you have me thinking about how to help him navigate the world of consumers (even though his current target is the CPA, financial advisor).
Thanks a ton.
TJ
Ron, I visited the site as soon as it came out of beta and all I found were money center banks and not community banks in my area. I provided my feedback and was thanked by the site owners. I hope all your readers do the same.
If Facilitas really wants to make their vision sing I agree with you and think they need to adopt a social platform or two.
We realize how important it is to have as many small banks and CUs listed as possible. We’re continuing to add more banks every week.
We wanted to launch with a national reach, so our strategy was to start with the biggest banks and work our way down the list (we already have the top 50 US banks in our system). Since our launch on Feb 1, several community banks and CUs have reached out to us and we’re looking forward to adding these banks and CUs (plus others) to our system over the weeks ahead.
Ron, I read your web 1.0 comment to mean that FindABetterBank lacked some of the technologies that make many of today’s sites pretty slick (i.e., ajax, flash). David’s comment about social platforms confused me because I think of social platforms as being about user-generated content. I’d like to address both issues:
- Spiffing up the UI. Right now, FindABetterBank uses a linear process (Step 1, Step 2, etc.) to get users through the sit. We’re working on a spiffy new version that will help us streamline the UI so users won’t have to jump back-and-forth between the steps if they want to change their search criteria.
- User-generated content. We’re exploring how to expose user content from the site. For example, we save search criteria and which account users choose in Step 4. Soon we’ll be able to say “X% of people with similar search criteria chose this account.” Right now, we’re building up our traffic and learning what users want. We’re trying to figure out how valuable this type of information will be to help people make better decisions.
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We have a patent-pending rate discovery solution that would be a killer app on this site in terms of lead generation. How are your charges structured to CUs?