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:

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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:

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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 »

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 »

While we don’t monitor third-party account aggregators like Mint, Wesabe and Cake Financial nearly as closely as we do our financial institution coverage groups, we do like to keep an eye on developments among those popular personal finance services. We receive a number of periodic emails from aggregation services where we’ve established accounts - financial summaries, account alerts, new discussions, etc. We had one in our inbox recently from Mint saying how much they’ve missed our visits and encouraging us to check in. While this was definitely not a unique or surprising communication, we found this interesting in light of a few trends among aggregators and financial services in general. Continue Reading »

Recently, I’ve noticed that a lot of consultants seem to be hosting webinars to help financial advisors understand how to leverage social communities like Twitter and Linked-In to build their businesses. While these webinars might be useful to those who are new to social media, most address only the most basic aspects of these different platforms. Many gloss over the regulatory risk inherent to these tools. I found this somewhat disturbing since many of the financial institutions we’re in contact with have cited FINRA rules as a barrier, if not the barrier, to their adoption of a social media strategy.

On Sunday, Investment News published an interesting article entitled, “A Warning Before You Twitter,” addressing the compliance issues advisors face when participating on these sites. Reiterating many of the same concerns we’ve heard from our clients, the article suggests that, while it may be possible for advisors to use these tools in a responsible and legal fashion, pre-approval requirements make spontaneous communication difficult, which detracts from the value of participation.

That’s not to say that financial institutions can’t benefit from social media - hardly; we presented several success stories in our Social Media report recently. Still, firms must tread carefully, considering the compliance implications every step of the way as they develop and implement their social media strategy. Industry consultants and the firms they serve cannot turn a blind eye to these issues.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that Corporate Insight has been monitoring financial services firms and their use of social media for over a year now. In late 2008, we published the industry’s first comprehensive study of the subject, Social Media: Trends and Tactics in the Financial Services Industry. The report looked at the way firms use tools like blogs, communities and forums to engage consumers and provided dozens of recommendations to help financial institutions navigate this new terrain.

One of our findings from the Social Media report was that the mutual fund industry was more conservative about social media than any other segment Corporate Insight tracks. That includes annuity issuers, banks, brokerages and credit card issuers. At the time we published the report, none of the 20 or so fund firms we monitor had experimented with publicly visible blogs or communities, for instance, let alone actively used sites like Facebook and Twitter to reach out to consumers. Well, Vanguard’s recent forays in the space suggest that this situation may finally be changing. Continue Reading »

Now that Oprah’s Twittering, it may feel like the whole world has suddenly jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. A number of financial services firms, however, have been using Twitter for more than year a now, as a vehicle for both promotion and customer service. We’ve been interviewed on the subject recently by publications as diverse as USA Today and Wall Street & Technology and we discussed it in last year’s Social Media report. Wachovia, one of the first firms we track to establish a Twitter presence, has used Twitter to answer customer questions and, of late, post updates regarding its merger with Wells Fargo.

Up until recently we had not seen any firms using Twitter as an extension of traditional private site functions. This month, however, Zecco announced that customers could now receive account alerts as direct messages through Twitter. Twitter seems like an ideal portal for alerts. Active Twitter users check their accounts throughout the day, both on their computer and on their cell phone, meaning that the chances of them seeing an account alert are high. And for Zecco, a firm that generally attracts younger, computer-savvy customers, the new Twitter alerts allow the firm to integrate its brand and service with a product many of its customers likely use.

Of course, there was more than just Twittering going during a busy April that saw a number of major changes. Continue Reading »

Social media continues to spur innovation in the financial services industry. Case in point: trade MONSTER’s new Feedback Forum. This online forum allows clients to submit suggestions to trade MONSTER regarding changes they’d like to see made to the platform, including new features and bug fixes. This concept in itself is not new; firms like Scottrade and Zecco also solicit feedback from clients via their boards (see below). trade MONSTER takes the concept further, though, by letting clients vote for the ideas they like, a techique used by TurboTax and discussed in our Social Media: Trends and Tactics in the Financial Services Industry report. Continue Reading »

Mobile investing and social media are two key industry issues we’ve recently discussed in our Consulting Insights newsletter. Wireless brokerage has been revitalized in the last few years thanks to a new generation of wireless devices, better connectivity, and stronger platforms from brokerage firms like E*TRADE and Fidelity. Social media is one of the biggest new trends in the financial services industry, one we first identified in our Spring 2008 issue and that we then covered in depth in our recent report, Social Media: Trends and Tactics in the Financial Services Industry.

Scottrade managed to tap into both of these themes recently when it released a beta version of its new Mobile Trading platform - m.scottrade.com - and asked its Online Community members for feedback. Continue Reading »