CBA makes another big move, in IB

CBA yesterday launched an impressive ugrade to their Netbank platform with the following features, from ITNews:

Personalisation / Customisation

The Commonwealth Bank has launched a new feature on its NetBank online banking site that allows users to choose how their financial data is presented to them.

As of tomorrow, the free "My Home" feature will allow CBA's 2.6 million NetBank customers to choose what information and functions they wish to appear upon first logging in.

"More and more, customers want to personalise according to what transactions or information they access regularly," said Commonwealth Bank CIO Michael Harte.

The feature has already been trialled with 10,000 customers, with positive results. Less than one per cent of customers made complaints about the new option being available.

Security

The CBA offers a "100 per cent security guarantee" on their transactions. Some 1.8 million NetBank customers have taken to two-factor authentication since the CBA introduced the technology earlier this year, he said.

But Harte said the bank has seen a "drop-off" in the use of physical hardware tokens since the CBA launched SMS codes as an alternative to the second factor to authenticate with. "The mobile phone is preferred," he said.

The bank also offers discounts for PC security products to its users. Further, the CBA subscribes to the Hawk-i monitoring service.

Single Sign On

The CBA also offers single sign-on access to its internet banking site (NetBank), its financial management site (CommBiz), its share and securities trading site (CommSec), its insurance product site (CommInsure) and the sites of the recently acquired Colonial First State Bank.

Harte said that the single sign-on has boosted sales of simple non-banking products, as it allows "users to easily see what is available in other parts of the bank, and instantly apply for new products and services."

"It otherwise would have taken hours of effort and research," he said. "You can top up your home loan today in a matter of minutes. One year ago, that would have taken 22 days."

Other - Product Configuration, Channel Consent, Widgets

Next on the list for CBA's customer experience team is to develop a self-service application that allows users to switch between various fixed and variable home loan options online, and further self-service functionality allowing users to choose how often and by what channels users wish to be notified by the bank (via email, SMS or phone).

CBA staff are also currently trialling NetBank widgets on Windows Vista machines, which allows key financial data such as bank balance and incoming transactions to expose themselves on a user's desktop. No details were available as to whether and when this service might be made available to customers.

Stats

• The CBA boasts 2.6 million active online banking users, out of 4 million registered users and between 9 to10 million total CBA customers. McEwan said this is a good figure considering the number of elderly, school-age and low income earner customers.


• The CBA is getting 60,000 new applicants for online banking every month.
  Some 70 per cent of NetBank's 60,000 mobile banking users access services on an Apple iPhone device, despite 14 handheld devices being supported.


• Close to 80 per cent of Australian internet users do some of their banking online.


• NetBank handles $20 billion of transactions per month and is the seventh most popular web site in Australia in terms of daily visitors, ahead of Westpac and ANZ.


• NetBank's front-end is an integrated mix of .Net, Java and Ajax. At the back-end is an Oracle 10G 8-node RAC cluster supporting 1800 transactions per second.

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