According to comScore, worldwide internet users reached the 1 billion mark in December:

Surpassing one billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet,” said Magid Abraham, President and Chief Executive Officer, comScore, Inc. “It is a monument to the increasingly unified global community in which we live and reminds us that the world truly is becoming more flat. The second billion will be online before we know it, and the third billion will arrive even faster than that, until we have a truly global network of interconnected people and ideas that transcend borders and cultural boundaries.”

This is, indeed, a major achievement and one that will have repurcussions we have yet to fathom. Within the world if retail financial services imagine what 1, 2, or 3 billion globally connected people can do for markets. Assuming we emerge from the current woes without losing our ability to innovate and desire to grow our businesses, the market opportunities this represents over the years are huge. I’ll admit I am not a futurist, but I am an optimist and I can’t help but think these numbers will lead to good things. And given the incessant drubbing the media feeds us day-in and day-out, I thought we could use a little optimism right now.

H/T: Mark Perry, Carpe Diem Blog

Following recent observations about how firms have been less than transparent about their financial stability on their websites and through other means, it seems that some companies are taking a different, more clear approach in reassuring potential clients. Instead of sugar-coating the state of their corporation’s health, some firms are now reassuring clients that their money is safe because their accounts are FDIC-insured – not because the firm is somehow “different from all the rest” that went down, as many have recently claimed.

While clients may still feel anxious and uncertain about the future home of their finances, the knowledge that their money is secure and won’t completely disappear with a firm if it collapses provides at least some comfort during financially unstable times. Continue Reading »

On the lighter side of things, perhaps we need to add this “firm” to coverage for Bank Monitor:

This week, we couldn’t help but think of the famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” photgraph from the 1948 presidential election. For those of you that may not be familiar, the famous photo depicts President Harry Truman holding up a newspaper with the erroneous headline declaring Thomas Dewey’s victory, when Truman actually ended up winning the election over Dewey. The newspaper publisher badly jumped the gun there. It was actually Wachovia that reminded us this week of that moment.

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Could it be we’re finding a bottom to the financial mess? I’m not an economist, but a couple of interest events point to some optimism:

Non-Government Assisted M&A - Usually, one of the first signs in forming a bottom is when investors (people, traders, firms, whatever) swoop in and start buying out-of-favor assets. Think value investing. A couple of news items recently seem to point to that happening: Continue Reading »

The past 10 days or so have clearly been turbulent ones for the financial services industry. Indeed, once the dust settled on an historically disastrous week for the markets, the investment banking industry as we know it had vanished, three major insurance companies were owned by the government and investor confidence had been broken seemingly beyond repair. Countless individuals were left jobless with shattered investment portfolios that were once expected to carry them into retirement.

Figuring out how to recover from this mess is the job of the policy wonks in Washington and the executive teams of the industry’s firms. Restoring trust in the markets and company brands for retail financial consumers, however, falls on the shoulders of financial marketers, product managers and corporate communications departments. A swift, convincing response is essential as firms look to preserve their client base and maintain a strong reputation that can help bring in new business. Continue Reading »

It’s been a growing trend for mutual fund advisor sites to reorganize their website content, with the goal seemingly to make for a cleaner appearance and provide streamlined access to information. When undergoing such changes, firms usually make site navigation simpler either by cutting down or moving information. Since mid-July, three firms have updated their website organization DWS, Fidelity and MFS. While Fidelity and MFS simply rearranged pre-existing content, DWS Scudder revamped their website (and name) completely. Continue Reading »

Elements of social media - like blogs, community and groups - are fast becoming a part of many financial services websites. Firms have also begun to stake out their place on major social sites like Facebook and YouTube. This year in particular has seen several financial services firms wake up to the potential of social media. As more and more companies dive into this new territory, it’s inevitable that some will succeed in implementing a social media strategy, while many will fail to effectively engage their audience.

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We were flipping through the most recent issue of Investment News and came across some interesting statistics. The Prime Numbers page at the end of the paper lists the number of unique website visitors in June and the monthly change for 10 financial services firms - Fidelity, Vanguard, Scottrade, E*TRADE Financial, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, ShareBuilder, Merrill Lynch, T Rowe Price and Smith Barney - all covered by Corporate Insight. (Compete Data Hub is listed as the study’s source.)

According to the stats, only discount firms - ShareBuilder, Scottrade and E*TRADE Financial - saw a positive month-over-month change in unique site visitors in June. Charles Schwab remained the same, and the others declined in visits. In fact, ShareBuilder saw a 15% rise in visitors (1,493,281 total) - the highest percentage rise - followed by Scottrade with an 8% rise (2,633,936 total). Interestingly, Fidelity had the largest total number of visitors in June (5,292,868), but that represents a 4% decrease.

These are interesting findings. Based on the numbers, it appears that investor interest may be turning in the direction of the discount brokers. Scottrade offers the lowest commissions of all these firms, followed by ShareBuilder and TD Ameritrade. This should not be too shocking, though, given the current state of the economy and the markets. Just like all consumers, investors are looking for bargains. Obviously, we cannot reasonably conclude that this is really a trend based on only one month’s numbers; however, it will certainly be interesting to see how this continues in future months. Hopefully, Investment News will continue publishing these statistics regularly.

A few weeks ago, Citibank announced that it was making changes to its credit card private site and would be displaying different screen designs for an unspecified number of days. For weeks following the announcement, which was reported in the July 14, 2008 CCM Update, we saw old and new pages in a seemingly random order when visiting the site. Compounding this confusion, we didn’t always see the same page when several of us viewed the site at the same time.

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