According to a recent study of 20 leading banking institutions in the U.S., the majority are failing to provide a full complement of online services expected by consumers.  Rosetta conducted the study by evaluating the largest financial institutions in the U.S. on several areas of online performance, including home page offerings, personal responsiveness and advanced technology and functionality.

Online banking customers expect to get his or her needs met immediately through the online channel. If banks cannot meet a customer’s most basic needs, starting at the home page, customer dissatisfaction skyrockets, and the bank’s ability to cross-sell or deepen the banking relationship with that customer is severely impacted. In addition, the chances of retaining them in the long-term are impaired.

The results of the study were surprising, for the fact that even though banks have taken great strides in improving their online presence; they are still behind the curve when it comes to meeting customers’ needs.

The Results:
The study examined online capabilities in four primary areas: home page; personal product landing pages; products and services; and online account opening. The study examined the websites for 32 separate “industry standard” capabilities. None of the 20 banks currently provide all 32 capabilities.

Findings from the study include:

• 60% do not identify and provide targeted messages to customers upon arrival at the website, using cookies to welcome back the consumer with a display of products recently searched for or the consumer’s region if bank is regionalized.


• Only 6 of the banks offered “Click to Call” functionality, a customer service feature which allows a link for the applicant to input a phone number and a time they would like a bank representative to contact them to assist with questions that the website is not able to answer.


• 50% offer mobile banking services.


• 50% do not offer information regarding online bill pay on the home page.


• Only 20% offer chat support to customers researching products and services.


• 35% of websites do not offer online banking account sign-in at the home page.


• Only 45% offer branch or ATM locators on the home page.


• 80% offer pre-filled applications, which allows current customers at the bank a new application which can be pre-filled with personal and account information where applicable.


• 30% do not perform “out of wallet verification”, an additional personal security question that only the applicant would be able to answer, to help the customer avoid having to perform trial deposits or sending or faxing a signature card.


• 60% offer more than one product during the application process.