Yesterday’s edition of Investor’s Business Daily featured a story by Brian Deagon entitled “Stock Sites Get ‘Social’ In 2.0 Era.” The article discusses the emergence of online investing communities and how these social networks act as an alternative source for research and investment advice.

I had a conversation with Mr. Deagon several weeks ago as he was researching the topic. We spoke about my piece in the spring edition of the Consulting Insights newsletter and what we thought the long-term effects would be on the brokerage industry. Continue Reading »

Fraud not only hurts a financial institution’s bottom line, it also generates the kind of negative publicity that’s difficult to erase and easily metastasizes in this information age. Thanks to the rise of social media, any fraud victim can log onto his or her blog, or post a clip on YouTube, and instantly vent about their experience for all of the world to hear. If their posting is entertaining or outrageous enough, it’s liable to circle the globe in as little as a few weeks, further blackening the institution’s reputation. Continue Reading »

DWS Scudder recently completed their transition to DWS Investments by unveiling a sleek new advisor site, www.dws-investments.com. The site makes extensive use of dynamic Flash animation, while adhering to an efficiency theory (as described by the firm) in which 95% of content should be accessible in two mouse clicks or less.

DWS is the first in our Mutual Fund - Advisor coverage group to offer a full site design that includes a high degree of customzability and incorporates Web 2.0 elements. The site offers a unique drag-and-drop Favorites tool alongside a PDF Builder. This lets advisors collect, combine and create documents with client-ready product information and commentary. As the pace of Internet technology quickens, users increasingly expect to be able to accomplish nearly everything without leaving a site’s homepage; DWS makes impressive headway in affording advisors this luxury. Continue Reading »

In last week’s e-Monitor Update, we discussed the introduction of Morgan Stanley’s Choice Select program - the firm’s newest pricing program for equity and option trades. It was not only the innovation of the program that struck us, but also the fact that it was an “old-school” full-service firm that introduced it.

What makes Choice Select so different? The key benefit is its deferred debit of commissions and its sliding scale. Whereas brokerage clients normally pay a commission on a trade-by-trade basis, Choice Select clients at Morgan Stanley don’t pay a commission at the time they place each trade. Rather, they are billed quarterly for all of the commissions that were generated from the preceding quarter’s trading. In effect, this seems to us to be like a charge card for trading commissions. Commissions are on a sliding scale based on total principal volume (total purchase or sale prices) of trading - more trading means lower marginal commissions.

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On the heels of my colleague John Cantwell’s recent blog post about banks and Youtube, I sat down for an interview with Kelsey Hubbard at MarketWatch to talk about how the financial services industry is using this site to engage their customers.

Because we’re in the position to keep tabs on what the competition is up to and comment on what we see and like, one topic that always seems to come up with financial marketers is online multimedia. So, we though we’d share a few thoughts… 

We’d always like to see more, not only because it makes our job a little more fun, but also because there aren’t a whole lot of prime examples out there, leaving plenty of room at the top. For a quick primer on multimedia marketing, we’ll share a few standouts that easily come to mind among the annuity firms we cover. Continue Reading »

It’s no coincidence that three of our last five blog posts have addressed the role of social media in the financial services industry. The topic continues to gain momentum in the industry and while it’s far too early to know just how great the impact will be on companies’ bottom lines, it’s clear that firms are actively looking for ways to harness this new form of marketing.

After my article on social media appeared in the most recent edition of our Consulting Newsletter, a number of clients expressed interest in learning more about the current state of social media and the financial services industry. As a result, we are preparing to publish a report on the topic this September. If you are interested in learning more about this report, feel free to send me an email at amaginn(@)corporateinsight.com.

As I was taking my weekly spin around the brokerage websites that Corporate Insight covers, I noticed a common theme — retirement. Firms are once again pushing “easy” retirement planning solutions and have rolled out a number of promotions that speak to this issue. While the idea of simplifying the retirement planning process is not new to the industry, firms are revisiting this concept and have introduced several new products and services to support it. 

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It’s been over two years since Business Week put Second Life on its cover. For those needing a refresher, Second Life is a virtual online world where users create their own identities and interact in a 3D environment. In its May 1, 2006 issue, Business Week hailed the concept of a virtual world as something that could help companies “transform the way they operate by providing a new template for getting work done, from training and collaboration to product design and marketing.”

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It’s not every day that you can spend a few hours at work watching YouTube, but that was my task today.

I was initially driven to the site by FNBO Direct’s new Pay Yourself First Challenge, which is like an essay contest, 2008-style - where customers describe their saving goals in a one-minute YouTube video for a chance to win cash and prizes.

FNBO’s promotion is one of the first instances of a retail bank establishing an official presence on YouTube - an interesting, but not altogether surprising, fact. As I searched YouTube looking for clips from other banks, I was struck by the predominantly negative presence that retail banks have on YouTube. Banks, it turns out, have an image problem on the site.

Consider these examples…

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