Published by Ian Lundahl on 04 Mar 2010
Following several months of new product releases, tools, and web promotions, the pace slowed across the industry this February. A few firms revamped their sites this month, and as the athletes took to the slopes in Vancouver, one firm promoted its 2010 Winter Olympics sponsorship online.
Published by Michael Ellison on 28 Jan 2010
FINRA this week published guidelines around social media in Regulatory Notice 10-06. While I’m no lawyer, there appears to be a few things that were clarified with this notice:
Published by Ian Lundahl on 03 Dec 2009
With 2010 almost upon us, firms rushed to make their end-of-year changes and introduce new programs.
Chase Introduces New Charitable Initiative through Facebook
Chase’s new Community Giving Program allows customers to vote, through Facebook, for their favorite charities, with top vote-getters receiving donations from Chase. In some ways, Chase’s Community Giving Program is a hybrid of two innovative programs previously introduced by other credit card issuers: Citibank’s Make a Difference program, introduced earlier this year, also utilizes Facebook as a platform through which users can help solicit donations to their favorite charities, while American Express’s Members Project, which ran in 2007 and 2008, allowed card holders to vote for new projects that would be funded by AmEx. Continue Reading »
Published by Michael Ellison on 25 Nov 2009
In this week’s Advisor Monitor Update (Corporate Insight subscription required), we reviewed Lord Abbett’s new advisor website. As we mentioned, the site revamp upgrades the site’s overall appearance, offers far more content and increases its usability with more clearly labeled tabs. It’s a good overall change, and the advisor homepage provides some good examples of best practices. In fact, there are five things we like about the new homepage:
Published by Ian Lundahl on 23 Nov 2009
Considering the popular Apple iPhone application commercials, one might wonder if there is an app for absolutely everything. Dog whistle? Check. Subway maps? Check. Is there an app for forecasting a child’s college education expenses? Check; thanks to AXA Equitable, there is.
The firm recently added an image to the public homepage that promotes their free College Savings iPhone application. In fact, the firm currently offers multiple financially-based applications, such as the Life Expectancy and Retirement Shortfall calculators. Continue Reading »
Published by Ian Lundahl on 11 Nov 2009
Like a trick-or-treater’s bag, heavy with an assortment of candy at the end of Halloween, this October offered a bit of everything…
Retirement gets social
After first launching a beta version in February 2008, TIAA-CREF made its retirement-focused online community, MyRetirement.org, publically available this month. MyRetirement is one of the broader online communities we have seen to date. Instead of focusing entirely on products, or featuring commentary exclusively from firm employees, TIAA-CREF provides customers with an open platform on which they can discuss retirement, as well as other topics of interest. TIAA-CREF’s decision to launch a beta version of the community was also significant; doing so allowed the firm to seed its discussion boards with user-generated content, meaning that when MyRetirement was officially opened, new users were able to join active conversations. Continue Reading »
Published by Michael Ellison on 10 Nov 2009
As we mentioned in this week’s Mutual Fund Monitor – Advisor update, Franklin Templeton’s Mark Mobius has entered the social media waters by launching a blog and Twitter profile. Over the past several months, I have had many conversations with mutual fund executives about how best to tackle social media. Indeed, at the recent MFEA Star Awards conference, social media was one of the most-discussed topics. In light of this, it is refreshing to see Franklin Templeton launch this blog and there are some useful takeaways for fund executives to learn from:
Published by Michael Ellison on 22 Oct 2009
On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion at the annual MFEA STAR awards in Chicago focusing on social media within the asset management industry. It was a lively discussion and a topic that is clearly on the minds of fund executives. Over the course of the day, there were a few recurring themes and issues, which I thought I’d highlight here as they are relevant to any financial firm exploring the social media waters: Continue Reading »
Published by Ian Lundahl on 14 Oct 2009
In February of 2007, TIAA-CREF introduced a beta version of their retirement-focused online community, MyRetirement.org, to a select group of clients. Recently the firm rolled the site out to its broader client base through an email invitation.
MyRetirement.org provides a unique outlet for the firm’s clients to discuss a number of topics, including investment and saving strategies, travel and leisure plans, even health and fitness tips. This broad range of financial- and lifestyle-focused content should appeal to the interests of the firm’s unique customer base, i.e., those with backgrounds in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields. Continue Reading »
Published by John Cantwell on 27 Jul 2009
Providing a fresh take on a still relatively fresh idea (direct savings accounts), newcomer SmartyPig has earned significant attention thanks to its high interest rates and unique savings plans. Add to that a recent investment from Red McCombs that, according to American Banker, significantly enhances the firm’s marketing reach, and SmartyPig is suddenly a firm to watch in the online savings arena.
Below, we take a quick look at SmartyPig’s offerings and list some of its relative strengths and weaknesses. It bears mentioning that we have not opened an account with SmartyPig, and as such we have not yet viewed SmartyPig’s private site. Continue Reading »
