Online banking saved my life. Okay it didn’t exactly save my life, but ever since my bank rolled it out some years ago I’ve been using it to control my spending by keeping a constant watch on my accounts.
Credit card spend used to be my downfall. When I began to use online banking I really got a better handle on my finances as I could check outgoings and make sure I didn’t spend more than I could afford to repay at the end of the month.
For me, like many people the initial stages of online banking were all about keeping an eye on your accounts – plain and simple. But in the past few years and particularly the last 12 months or so, there’s been a huge push by the banks and other financial organisations to turn the online experience into a more varied and interesting one. These days there’s so much more banking to be done online – there is a raft of services online from old reliables, such as bill pay to new services, such as buying and selling shares.
Active encouragement
According to Sean Jevens, head of e-channel development at AIB, the bank encourages its customers to use the Internet and phone banking system as much as possible. Like many of the other banks AIB has a raft of services that can be availed of online such as bill pay (50 different billers available), mobile phone top-up, access to all your AIB accounts, credit cards, finance and leasing loans, current account saving accounts and so on. “You can see them within the system in one view. We show balance info and history of transactions so you can see that and all the information you want,” said Jevens.
Money transfer
One of AIB’s newest products is IMT – international money transfer. This allows anyone to transfer money to another account/recipient internationally and providing it’s in the EU and an EU payment and you take the ‘not urgent’ option it’s free. “This service was launched a few months ago for the personal sector and has proved very popular,” said Jevens. “We did a recent survey and last month 24% of the payments were to Poland. People are also using it to pay for things such as holiday homes in France using the IBAN number on the invoices,” said Jevens.
AIB will also soon be launching a standing order service whereby you can set up, see, amend and cancel standing orders online. The bank also has a relatively new service that allows the customers to buy and sell shares online. It’s an opt-in service and the customer has to sign up for it and there’s a small fee for doing so.
Transparency
Similar to AIB, National Irish Bank (NIB) also has the IMT service in addition to the usual range of products and service most banks now have online.
Raymond Holmes, stream lead of retail solutions at NIB, described the online services offered as the “bread and butter” stuff such as online accounts, credit cards, PIN reorder, bill pay, setting up standing orders, ordering foreign currency and traveller cheques and so on. “It’s all about transparency,” said Holmes. “Customers can see what’s going on in their accounts and can do their banking on their own time thereby saving time and money. We’ve also just started to push share trading online as well.”
Change for you
Bank of Ireland (BOI) has recently poured a wad of cash into developing its online personal banking system. As part of its “Changing for You” customer programme, an investment of EUR*5 million in upgrading its 365 Online service with a range of new services. The first phase of this upgrade was introduced in June 2006.
The second phase of the upgrade is on the way, so in addition to being able to access the usual online baking services such as bill pay, credit cards and accounts, BOI will introduce international payments to over 40 countries in many currencies, set up, view and cancel standing orders, online registration of third party accounts for payments and mobile phone top ups
Ulster Bank has recently upgraded the look and feel of its site as well and has all the usual online banking suspects available such as balance information, account activity, transaction details, standing order view, third party transfer party transfer and bill payment.
According to information we received from the bank it doesn’t yet appear to have IMT, share trading or mobile phone top up.
MORTAGES ONLINE?
While all the banks would ultimately like to go down the online mortgage route, they all say people like to have face to face advice when brokering a mortgage. While research is done extensively online, when it comes to the nitty-gritty people prefer to talk to someone.
IRELAND VS EUROPE
According to all the banks we are faring very well against our European colleagues.
AIB, for example, bench marks itself against the UK banks and finds it stacks up against them reasonably well. Indeed, some UK banks would not have some services such as IMT. However the UK is ahead in terms of alert capabilities such as getting an alert when your salary is lodged.
In terms of the adoption of internet banking Ireland is on par with the UK though some way behind the Scandinavian countries and the USA.
The Scandinavian banks have enormous usage levels of 60-70% of their customers whereas Ireland’s usage levels are around 30%.
Ireland’s embrace of online banking is, however, growing. According to AIB its services are attracting a customer growth rate of 20% a year. This year it will have 31 million logins as opposed to 25 million last year.
THE FUTURE?
More adults are using the Net every day. According to figures from Comreg, 61% of adults use the Net at least once a week. With the increasing rollout of broadband, internet banking looks likely to see a huge upsurge in the next few years.
SECURITY, PHISING AND FRAUD
Some customers avoid online banking as they perceive it as being too vulnerable to fraud. The security measures employed by most banks are never 100% safe, but in practice the number of fraud victims due to online banking is very small. Indeed, conventional banking practices can be more prone to abuse by fraudsters than online banking. Credit card fraud, signature forgery and identity theft are far more widespread than online computer crime.
Online banking can be more insecure if users are careless, naïve or not computer savvy. An increasingly popular criminal practice to gain access to a user’s finances is phishing, whereby the user is persuaded to hand over their password(s) to the fraudster.
All banks recommend that customers never divulge their details as no bank would ever send an e-mail for such information. Customers are advised to contact their banks if they ever get suspicious mail relating to their accounts.
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