NEW BANKS
TAP TOP TECH
MINDS TO
WOO ANGRY
CONSUMERS
Huntington’s IT staff
learns how to share.
CRM’s untethered in the
world of smartphones
Skittish on
Security
U.S. banks lag in
browser guards, but Fifth
Third is stepping out
ONLINE PROTECTION
MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE ATTACKS
and other assaults on the
browser are becoming more
common and pose a chal-
lenge to the whole banking
industry, says Joe Bernik,
chief information security
officer at Cincinnati-based
Fifth Third Bank.
His bank has taken
action by piloting a security
solution for corporate clients
that “locks down” the online
banking session between the
customer’s PC and the bank.
The rationale at the bank
was simple, he says. If the
Fifth Third really wants to
be a “trusted advisor” it can’t
just make the online channel
available, it needs to help se-
cure that channel by respond-
ing to threats.
This philosophy aligns
Fifth Third closer to Euro-
pean and Canadian banks—
many of which offer security
solutions to retail and busi-
ness customers—than to
U.S. banks, which have been
generally reluctant to require
or even recommend security
features that touch the cus-
Leading Off, page 10
WHO’S THE GREENEST OF THEM ALL? Citi Chief Operations & Technology Of;cer Don Callahan and Citi Foundation CEO Pam Flaherty lead the bank’s industry-leading sustainability efforts. COVER STORY PAGE 16
Reg E Changes
Pose Tech
Challenges
PAYMENTS
New rules portend segmenting customers,
tracking opt-ins, and updating the core
BANK OF AMERICA AND CITI ARE TAKING THE HIGHER—AND LESS
profitable—road by not offering fee-based overdraft protection
to debit card users who exceed their available balance. But many
other banks in the industry can’t afford to abandon the entire
revenue stream, leaving them with a marketing and technical
challenge to get customers to opt in or out of overdraft protec-
tion by summer. “The folks who really live on these NSF fees,
they can’t afford to follow suit. They can’t even think about it,”
says Bart Narter, Celent’s senior banking analyst.
The technical and operational challenges posed by the chang-
es to Reg E hit three touchpoints: marketing, or how to effective-
ly reach those customers who currently drive the most NSF/OD
revenue; compliance, how to receive and create an audit trail for
the requisite opt in or opt out decisions; and core banking, how
Customer Tactics, page 22
Citi Kills Obopay P2P Trial
P2P MOBILE ADOPTION
“The market just isn’t ready” for mobile transfers
CITIGROUP, THE FIRST MAJOR
bank to evaluate mobile
transfers, determined that
even the people most likely
to consider their phones a
useful way to send money
are still years away from em-
bracing the technology.
Citi quietly shuttered a
two year old program in De-
cember, concluding that con-
sumers are only starting to
understand the capabilities
of the increasingly sophisti-
cated phones that are now
becoming common.
“The market just isn’t
ready for it yet,” says Jeff Se-
menchuk, head of Citi’s new
growth ventures unit. “U.S.
consumers are now just get-
ting comfortable with using
their mobile phone for a lot
of things.” But for mobile
transfers, “the demand is not
yet explicit.”
Citi is still committed to
the concept, and is even an
investor in the company that
pioneered mobile transfer
technology, Obopay.
Numerous financial
companies are offering or
developing mobile transfer
services, but Aaron McPher-
son, a research manager for
Direct Access, page 24
BY THE
NUMBERS
32
percentage of American households
with bank accounts that receive statements “online only.”
n= 5,000, March 2010
SOURCE: JAVELIN STRATEG Y & RESEARCH
