The internet long ago succeeded in commoditizing a large number of insurance products. Now a new company, Facilitas, Inc. is attempting to do something similar with consumer banking. The on-line tools now available on-line through Bankswitcher.com help consumers cope with the dread and drudgework associated with switching banks by providing them all the paperwork they need to do so easily, and all in response to a simple questionnaire. While the list of banks for which Bankswitcher has pre-compiled information already available is presently short, it’s certain to grow. Since this tool has the potential to cut both ways, positioning yourself to defend against its threats, and take advantage of its opportunities naturally starts with an assessment. We suggest that you direct your browser to http://www.bankswitcher.com/ and do a little comparison shopping yourself.

Master Chief Banks Here!

While you might not understand who Master Chief refers to — Halo 3 , I’m sure quite a few teenagers and college students do. With video games being a major interest of the younger generation, First Mutual Bank based out of Washington State came out with an idea to attract the attention to the younger generation. By doing this, teenagers would feel comfortable banking at the institution, since the bank shows that they have at least a basic understand the goals and interests of teenagers.

Hopefully, the bank has a full marketing campaign that goes with the signage. Definitely, an idea would be to offer new customers a discount on the purchase of the video game. Teenagers would probably be interested in that type of free gift, than the typical toaster oven that is usually given as the free gift.

With Apple’s iPhone and now recently released iPod Touch, banks need to seriously consider a strategy in regards to mobile devices. While banks start planning and upgrading their their online banking site to be mobile friendly, they need to remember not to ignore their main public site.

The public site already contain quite a bit of important and useful information. That information can be very helpful when a customer is anyway from a computer. Whether they are on travelling for business, vacation or just going down the street to grocery store, they can get information about branch locations/hours and contact information of someone at the bank by just logging on to the bank’s mobile friendly public website. And if your bank is part of an ATM network, customers can use locate near-by fee-friendly ATMs without needing to go out-of-network ATM.