Ten years into online banking, and logging into an account via the Web is no longer exceptional.Access is assumed.
For consumers, it's online banking with bill pay; for businesses, online banking with account management.
At a minimum.
Almost all banks offer online services.
"Many customers may not want it or use it," says Jim DeVolld, president and chief credit officer of First Independent Bank of Nevada.
"But if you don't have it, it's tough to compete."
First Independent offers online services.
So do most of the other community and Nevada-based banks.
But Wells Fargo claims the title of the first ever to introduce online banking.
It was 10 years ago, the national financial institution noted this month.
Ten years since the first Wells Fargo bank account was accessed via the Web.
And oh, how far banks have come since.
As of this year, about 53 percent of its consumer customers use online services, says Jim Smith, senior vice president ofWells Fargo's Consumer Internet Products.
The acceptance of the Web grew slowly.
It took five years for Wells Fargo to reach its first million online customer landmark.
It took two years to reach the second million mark.And now, the bank is adding about one million online customers per year, he says.
Wells Fargo launched a business online service in 2000, and now counts more than half of a million business customers using its Web services.
Growth is exponential in both segments.
From December 2003 to December 2004, Wells Fargo reports that its business online banking in Nevada grew by 48 percent.
Consumer online banking grew 31 percent.
The first 10 years of its online services was all about migrating existing services to the Web, adds Smith.
Consumer customers were enticed into trying online services like bill pay,money transfers, and account monitoring.
Small businesses, similarly, were wooed into trying out the Web for their everyday transactions, including account monitoring.
First and easiest to go to the Web, he adds, were the services that could be done by phone.And if there's a department that has seen a substitution of services to the Web, it's Wells Fargo's phone-based customer service.
Chiefly, the Web has been an add-on, though, Smith says.An add-on that plays to the bottom line.
Wells Fargo has discovered that customers who use the online services are 50 percent less likely to leave the bank, says Smith.
And, too, once hooked into online banking, the customers are more likely to buy other services from the bank.
Today those services cover a wide and ever-widening array for all banks with Web service.
Small businesses use the Internet for cash management, says Paul Stowell, senior vice president and public relations manager for Business Bank of Nevada.
The firm rolled out its online banking site in 2000.
Providing online banking levels the playing field, adds Stowell.
Las Vegas-based Business Bank, which opened a Carson City branch five years ago and its first offices in Reno in late 2004, is now in the process of reengineering its site and planning to add positive pay within the next 60 days.And it's planning zero balance account capabilities within 90 to 120 days.
Positive pay is one of the tools in the online toolbox, adds DeVolld.
It allows First Independent Bank customers to monitor and approve checks before they are processed.
Adds Roger Ashby, regional president of northern Nevada for Nevada First Bank, a Las Vegas-based institution that opened its first Reno branch this year: "One of the major uses of online banking is for monitoring." All that is ongoing, says Smith.Wells Fargo, among the leaders in cutting edge online services, is now looking to what's next.
"We're moving away from simply migrating services and into developing more," says Smith.
The Web adds some possibilities that were previously unfeasible.
Some of those possibilities? Wells Fargo is looking into services such as notifying business customers when checks clear, maybe via email or Web-based messaging.
Or customers could be notified when a check value or money movement exceeds a set amount, info that could shoot to them via cell phone,messaging, or email.
With today's backend databases and tracking capabilities, accounts and information can be customized in numerous ways, adds Smith, to help businesses manage fraud, both internal and external.
The big banks are leading the way in online technology.
Community banks are less likely to be on the cutting edge, but they are still in the game.
At First Independent Bank of Nevada, says Renee' Gloyd, online banking coordinator, 40 percent of its customers use the online services.
Banks are including other value-adds on their Web sites, too.Wells Fargo includes a Spanish translation of many of its services, along with small business information and financial management guidelines.
