Nowadays a lot of banks offer their services through the Internet. The youngsters born with the cellular phone and the computer at home are very active on the web. Adults in a hurry enjoy doing banking outside traditional banking hours and even elderly people discovered working themselves with their investment portfolio.
By Hubert Van de Vyver, ebanking expert
And by Howard Davies
On the Internet, there are different financial services from basic PC banking to complex investment banking for industrial or professional clients or even central banks doing transactions with commercial banks through the Internet. Other services are brokerage services for active investors or private e-banking for wealthy clients,
Nevertheless, this area of financial businesses is still very new and challenges the establishments on such items as risk management, security and auditing. Some legislation is in the making; some European directives already exist and give a legal framework. In the auditing an risk management area the Bank of International Settlements also created directives for cross border interactions between home country and foreign countries.
New ways of collaboration change the competitive framework: e.g. fund managers offer their products many financial players on the Internet and are
sold by retail banks alongside their own banking funds; supermarkets and car distributors offer credits through the Internet. Even new products are popping up: account aggregation, smart agents for home and car insurances etc.
Another development is e-money, of which Pay Pal, the online payment method of the famous ebay company, is a good example. Card based and network e-money is used by many clients and will challenge the payment system of the future.
A standing development is also the many channels through which the client communicates with the bank: branches, ATM’s, e-banking, mobile banking (cellular phone, pda …), banking through interactive TV etc. Interaction with the e-banking services is central to the approach in this book although the next revolution will be mobile and interactive TV banking.
