As we mentioned in our Bank Monitor Update (Corporate Insight subscription required) last week, Citizens Bank repackaged its fee-free Student Checking account into a new $3.99-per month Student Money Bundle. The new Student Money Bundle includes a basic checking account, as well as the chance to receive coupons on popular student items by registering through an external sitelet.

The bundle consists of the following new features:

·         Discounts on items such as food, books, electronics and entertainment. Students must create a profile at a Money Savings Discount Site to receive coupons – very convenient for discounts!

·         Coverage of up to $250 in cash to cover theft or damage to a cell phone if the cell phone bill is paid by the account’s debit card.

Student Banking is a crucial topic of discussion this time of year as every parent hopes that their child is financially responsible to be on their own and to handle a credit card.  A few other firms with notable package highlights for Students are:

·         Bank of America Student Banking Accounts 

o   Bank of America Debit Card with Total Security Protection package including the Photo Security Feature

o   Free Online Banking Service with Mobile Banking

·         Chase Student Center

o    Chase offers a free checking account to college student for up to 5 years

o   Free Debit Card with Zero Liability protection

o   Free Online Banking and Bill Pay

·         Wells Fargo College Combo

o   Interest rate discount on select student and automobile loans

o   Monthly service fee waived when the account is linked to Wells Fargo PMA Package or Wells Fargo Campus ATM or Campus Debit Card

o   Minimum opening deposit

As we highlighted in our e-Monitor Update, Charles Schwab expanded its line of commission-free proprietary ETFs with three new Bond ETFs - Short-Term U.S. Treasury, Intermediate-Term U.S. Treasury and U.S. TIPS. Details on each of the new Bond ETFs can be found here. Since the launch, the firm has been actively promoting the new ETFs with promotional images throughout its site and with promotional emails to clients. In total, the firm now offers 11 proprietary ETFs - covering domestic and international equities, and now bonds - that can be traded for free.

Investment News published an article yesterday highlighting Ameriprise Financial’splan to increase account fees on clients with assets between $100,000 and $500,000 next year. We found this to be a peculiar move because it applies only to that middle segment - clients with less than $100,000 and those with more than $500,000 will be unaffected. Clients with less than $100,000 will continue to pay $40 per year for brokerage add-on accounts and $80 per year for an Ameriprise ONE Financial Account. Clients with more than $500,000 - Achiever Circle Elite clients - will continue to have their account fees waived. Continue Reading »

As was recently reported on Bank System &Technology’s website, Bank of America is looking to introduce a new checking account that is fee-free to users, but fails to include teller access or hardcopy statements. Instead, holders of the new account will be expected to do their banking at ATMs and online, and to rely completely on electronic statements and other private site details for account information. For those users that open the account and then visit a teller or request a paper statement, an $8.95 maintenance fee is applied for that month. While this new B of A product can be seen as an example of banks trying to generate new revenue from account holders in the wake of coming restrictions on overdrafts and other fees, it might be better viewed as an account analogous to a Direct Savings Account. Continue Reading »

Firms have been hard at work through a blistering hot summer. A number of firms recently announced forthcoming site revamps and a number of credit card issuers revamped their rewards sites.

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When do statements make a firm broker? When they cost more to send than the money in the account on which they are reporting. Please excuse my mangling the English language to get the point across, but I wanted to share something that happens all too often in the financial industry.

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PassWindow Inventor Matt Walker was recently quoted in the Wall Street Journal making a bold claim - that his new PassWindow card “essentially solves the Internet-fraud problem.” PassWindow looks like a credit card, but has a transparent window with a series of lines that can combine with fields displayed online to form numeric security codes. If implemented on financial services websites, the simple, award-winning device can verify both the user’s identity as well as the bona fides of the website, ensuring it is not a “spoof” set up by fraudsters to steal clients’ personal information and login credentials.

In the latest issue of our Consulting Insights newsletter, we discussed several emerging trends in combating online fraud. Continue Reading »

Summer is finally here, and credit card firms have added some new rewards programs to help defray the flight costs of summer travel. New retirement themed marketing campaigns were also introduced this June, and Merrill Lynch introduced a new site (Merrill Edge) with a focus on self-directed investing.

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Broker Monitor’s 2010 Annual Statement Analysis is hot off the press! As in past years, we reviewed the statements from a wide variety of brokerage firms, ranked them and recognized the best in a number of different areas. Overall, Merrill Lynch continues to offer the best client statement in the industry – beating out all other competitors for the fourth year in a row. Both the design and content of Merrill Lynch’s statement remain strong, with excellent account summary details and good use of graphics.

The top five brokerage statements in our analysis belong to Merrill Lynch, UBS, Wells Fargo Advisors, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (legacy Smith Barney statement) and Charles Schwab. But what exactly makes these statements better than those of their peers? Continue Reading »

“Mobile” has been on the minds of many this May, as a number of firms across our different Monitor coverage groups introduced or improved mobile features. 

Wells Fargo introduced a new set of account alerts that notify clients via SMS when an alert is triggered. Six new alerts were added, including alerts that inform customers if transactions occur outside the U.S., if charges were made at a gas pump, if a transaction exceeds a designated amount, if a transaction was declined. The new alert service is available only to customers who are enrolled in Online Banking. Similarly, Bank of America now allows customers to request their account balance, transaction history and customer service phone numbers via SMS. Chase and KeyBank provide similar text command capabilities. Continue Reading »