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Ongoing list of Social Media Efforts from Banks, Credit Card, Financial Institutions and Lenders

Categories: Industry Index, Social MediaPosted on June 23rd, 2008

I’m here in NYC, one of the financial nerve centers in the world, attending Forrester’s Finance Forum. With loyalty to brands decreasing over time, companies need to figure out how to reach customers where they are, where many, are discussing their financial past, present and future online.

During today’s panel and speaker discussions, I heard a lot of trepidation, fear, and uncertainty from many of the brands. Most are answering the first two of the five questions (”what” and “why”) I use to gauge company sophistication. Some mentioned they want to toe-dip and get out if it didn’t work well, others mentioned they were monitoring, and some feel threatened by the peer to peer models that cut out the middle man.

The finance industry has a unique challenge, hindered by government regulations and often a conservative culture, they have a real challenge embracing the online conversation that’s already happening between customers.

Criteria: Although there are many finance startups and consumer review sites, this list is really about the financial institutions, large brands, and banks that are adopting social media to reach customers.

Ongoing list of Social Media in the Financial Industry

Wells Fargo
The first and greatest case study to date is of what Wells Fargo has done with their multiple blogs, starting with the Guided by History blog, Later, they launched the Student LoanDown blog, and a virtual world called Stagesoach Island Community that lets members learn and experience financial management.

H&R Block
This company has done quite a bit with blogs, virtual worlds, Facebook campaigns, and social media programs and campaigns. During tax time, there was a significant upswing of activity from Facebook applications, and they engaged in online dialog in Twitter by first monitoring keywords and directly responding to members.

Intuit
Online communities are nothing new to Intuit, this customer-focused brand let’s customers self-support each other, as well as communicate to them using blogs. Quickbooks (financial software) has extensive growth for SMBs who want to connect to each other.

Chase +1
This credit card company used Facebook to find out about what customers desired, laying the foundation for delivering a customer-focused product

Ernst & Young
This large accounting services and consulting firm is anxious to reach new hires fresh out of college, by creating a sponsored Facebook group, they have online dialogs with graduating students starting the interview process online. Smart way for each party to learn for each other.

Royal Bank of Canada
Launched this ongoing blog called the Innovator Blog, which goes back to October 2006. Link via Trevor Cook. Also, they’ve a Facebook page, (link from iljazz)

ING
Trevor Cook has more details, listing that ING has an Asia / Pacific blog, My Cup of Cha, a microfinance blog, and a Chinese blog. They’ve also created a microsite called I need to go, that has a spreadable widget.

Fidelity
Using map mashups and podcasts, Fidelity is reaching to it’s customers using new channels. (from Benjamin Ensor, Forrester)

Genworth
Springboardforum – From Genworth – you need to get an account to see it (free) “Genworth has partnered with Dow Jones, Time Inc., Bloomberg and Source Media to provide you with tools & resources that may support your business”(tip from Jay Bryant)

HSBC
This online community from HSBC Business Network is for SMB and entrepreneurs (tip from Jay Bryant)

Alberta’s Commonwealth
Online community for Alberta’s Generation Y provides a lifestyle platform for youth to self express and support called Young & Free.

Discover
This lifestyle portal provides helpful content for Discover customers, called Discover Edge, it delivers expert best practices for money management. It’s difficult to see if this has social features.

American Express
This website called OpenForum provides a dialog for customers, Chris Brogan has the details.

Capital One
This social network for small businesses, called Slingshot, allows people to connect to each other, promote their services, in this ‘yellow pages’ type of marketplace.

Canada’s Largest Credit Union, Vancity, launches blog
This blog, called Change Everything, is intended to spread feel good messages and videos to attract Vancity’s community, and interesting project.

MyVault by Scotia Bank
This ‘dashboard’ style interactive application allows members to manage their money, gather feeds, and communicate with community members via forums, called MyVault.

IT Counts by the Institute of Chartered Accountants
This community site ION, yields blogs by thought leaders on the topic of technology, sponsored by Microsoft.

Young & Free Alberta (Groundswell Award Winner, 2008)
The program launched in October 2007 with a two-month search and competition to find a dedicated Young & Free Alberta Spokesperson. The winner, Larissa Walkiw, became a paid employee of the credit union, working full time with the job description: talk, type and tell good stories. For her nine-month term, Larissa was essentially a full time blogger for the credit union. Learn about the award.

Charles Schwab (Groundswell Award Winner, 2007)
“In January 2007, Charles Schwab worked with Communispace to launch their “Money and More” private online community made up of 350 25-to-40 year old Generation X non-Schwab clients. Based on insights from the community, Schwab lowered account minimums to $1,000, introduced Schwab’s high-yield Investor checking account with a high yield, and developing an online landing page specifically for the Gen X target. Schwab has added 32% more Gen Xers YTD when compared to similar timeframes last year.” –see the award page

Who else? Leave a comment, of if you’re shy, send me an email. I’ll keep this updated until I can’t scale further

Related Resources

  • Social media for the insurance agency
  • Social media for the automotive industry
  • List of social media strategists and community managers at enterprise corporations
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    This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 3:19 am and is filed under Industry Index, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    Comments
    • Amex and Social Media

      http://www.openforum.com/index.jspa

      (Do not work for Amex - no relation to Amex)
    • I met a guy at ONA in Toronto last year who was online editor for the Federal Reserve Bank. He had been charged with figuring out how they could incorporate social media without giving away the bank, so to speak. I think I'll follow up with him and report back.
    • Here are two that often come up in conversation:
      - The Motley Fool's CAPS
      - Reuters Stock Buzz (powered by SocialPicks)
    • Angela, thanks, let me know if you've any reports.

      Eric, good examples, let me review.
    • Jim Hirshfield
      Dude, Those are old-time financial behemoths re-engineering with social media - a good thing. Noticeably absent from list are sites like mint(TC40 winner last year), NYC based geezeo.com and the p2p lending sites (NYC based fynanz.com for student loans), social stock portfolio sharing sites (like NYC based covestor.com). Most of these are born from social media.
    • L.
      As we all know, banking and the financial industry as a whole can be, well, a bit conservative. In order to get them to understand the benefits of social media, there must be a strong ROI, especially in the wake of the many issues in financial markets. However, I do believe that through social media, it is a great opportunity for these companies to connect with their customer based and vice versa.
    • Jeremiah,

      Based upon my experiences, there are a few extra inhibitors to the external facing adoption of web 2.0 in financial services.

      For listed financial services organisations there is an added constraint that communications disseminated by anyone in the company must be thoroughly sanitised in order to protect sensitive information leaking that may impact the share price.

      There are also only a limited amount of people that are allowed to contact the outside world on behalf of their organisation, without prior approval. This sort of formality is not very supportive of social networking principles and definitely not condusive to real-time discussions.

      As you allude to above, other inhibitors are that unlike other industry consumer based idea incubators (e.g. Dell ideastorm), financial services industry products are heavily regulated and the potential to differentiate is limited beyond fees, commission, tax inentives or performance (the relevant metric is based upon the type of product obviously). After all, it's all about managing cash, debt and spreadsheets.

      Unless you're the federal reserve or one of a few economic or trading geniuses, creating new types of cash based products is out of the question for most. :)

      Banks arguably have the best chance given they are obviously retail based and their sheer numbers mean they all need to seek some sort of differentiator even if it's only for a brief period of time. I just hope it doesn't become yet another tool for banks to pretend that they're our "friend". ;)

      I also suspect that there may be more non-retail based financial services organisations than there are retail and therefore the majority of the market has a need to communicate with a different type of customer, i.e. other financial services, intermediaries and general organisations.
    • In Spain we have some examples of the use of Social Media. An intersting exemple is Caja Navarra with their improvement of web 2.0. Their get the oppinion of their costumers about their invesment policy on social projects.
      (http://www.cajanavarra.es/es/)
    • Here are three more to add to the list:

      http://www.openforum.com - A site from American Express for their small business owners

      https://www.springboardforum.com - From Genworth - you need to get an account to see it (free)

      And: http://network.hsbc.co.uk/index.jspa - From HSBC for entrepreneurs
    • One I just found out about recently is ZeccoShare, though I haven't really spent any time digging into it to see it's positives/negatives or how many members it actually has.
    • Also there's
      Bankrate.com
      epinions has ratings
      and many others like mint.com
    • The mBank Portal -- www.mbank.cz (not in English, ps) -- which is branchless banking in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland attempts to maintain something of a blog -- in Czech -- but the posts, I've found, are rather inane and airy, and while the client numbers are rising nicely, +vely on fire in Poland. I suspect that people are ecstatic to just have branchless banking at their disposal as opposed to being told how to manage their money. There are options, in other words.

      Blogging, think they -- who gives a hoot, at this stage, it would seem...
    • I don't think this is on your list yet, but Capital One started a community called Slingshot. This SNS connects a group of small business owners with buyers and suppliers. Check it out
    • Jeremiah, you should visit our site, SmartyPig. It is the only true banking application that is social where you can invite your friends and family to be a part of your saving process. We also offer cash incentives from top retailers and one of the most competitive interest rates in the country (currently 3.90% APY). The platform itself is Web 2.0. SP utilizing blogs, Facebook, widgets and social networking applications, twitter and get satisfaction. We launched just a few months ago and already have users in all 50 states. Check us out. Thanks, Jon Gaskell, Co-Founder
    • Bo
      Jeremiah,

      I really like your blog, but I must disagree with your having listed WF as the #1 social media savvy corporation. Their blogs are rarely edifying, and don't really come from a significant place of authority. The entire SI feature could be replaced by 15 minutes in the presence of an informed adult, or their perfectly adequate FAQ. In fact, I would consider Wells Fargo the poster child for poorly conceived social media efforts. I will give them points for trying, and I don't mean that sarcastically, but I don't consider them a success in that arena. SouthWest, Adobe, Kodak and SmartyPig (above) are better examples IMO. (and I do like what H&RB has done with Twitter)
    • Royal Bank of Canada is doing a few other things. Check out their Facebook initiative "RBC Bankbook": http://tinyurl.com/6psktw

      RBC also has a group blog by students, RBC P2P:http://www.rbcp2p.com/index.asp
    • You missed the programs that the team I led at Scotabank put together, including our podcast "The Money Clip" and the online community, MyVault. www.myvault.scotiabank.com


      I left the bank in January of this year, but those programs were forerunners to the other digital and social media efforts of Canadian FI's.
    • Hey Jeremiah, thanks for kind words!

      A couple of corrections: It's "The Student LoanDown Blog", not "low down"...although, nice name :-) and you had an "X" there. Did you mean to mention our Stagecoach Island Community? That's a site in addition to the virual world--the blog/site supports users of the world. We also have a B2B blog, but it's for customers only.
    • Excellent post!

      It's hard to introduce solutions based on new media or social media to financial brands. Somehow they're quite conservative.
      I try to follow every interesting innovation in finance market.

      I would add to your list a very interesting social network for entrepeneurs in Europe:

      http://www.join2grow.biz/default.aspx#

      It is a community created and supported by Fortis Bank. One of the biggest banks in Western Europe.
    • Ed, thanks, I made the changes
    • Don't forget about VanCity's altrusitic endeavor: Change Everything

      TD Canada'S Money Lounge on Facebook

      and Visa's recent facebook small business endeavour
    • The ICAEW's IT Counts site at www.ion.icaew.com/itcounts sponsored by Microsoft is aimed at chartered accountants.
    • Jeremiah, The VanCity site is Change Everything not Change Anything.
    • Hi Jeremiah
      Sorry for the late comment but I have something to add to ING. Last year they had a great campaign call "I need to go" in which you were able to download the campaign's widget (toilet doors) to your blog's sidebar.
    • Omar, thanks I updated
    • we have one in israel that we built for jerusalem bank.
      two blogs at the moment for international investment and stock market experts. the two is writing by top manegers from the bank.
      http://www.bankjerusalem-blogs.co.il/
    • Great post - v interesting- does anyone have any examples of social media initiatives in higher level finance organisations ie those that handle hundreds of millions of dollars investments.
    • Great, nice and interesting post.
    • Another one from Visa that I just found:

      http://tinyurl.com/3lz2xt
    • It's very telling to see such institutions moving to social media. The opportunities to engage the customer through social media are almost as magnetic as when entire families sat glue to the TV set in the 1950s. As long as the content is enlightening, educational and/or entertaining, it's not too hard to create an avalanche of raving fans.
    • Jeremiah,

      I wanted to mention Banktastic.com to you as well. We're trying to tackle the problem of a heavily regulated and generally conservative group by providing them a place of value for the banker themselves and hopefully, by seeing the potential of the medium, it encourages them to engage back outward to their user base in the way they feel comfortable.

      We market our platform out to state and national associations/groups to private connect to each other.
    • Some useful links to consider for my finance blog. Thanks.
    • Hi Jeremiah, If you want an example of what NOT to do in social media for banking, the NAB uBank / MyFutureBank is a worthy case study. They began the SMM experiment, got scared by some bad blog and media publicity and pulled the whole shebang. I try to summarise the events on my blog at http://beyonddigitalmedia.wordpress.com/2008/10...
    • Members Credit Union (Winston-Salem, NC) - What are you saving for? program: http://www.whatareyousavingfor.com
    • Andrew
      Great list and very interesting - how about B2B based social media initiatives? - much of the financial services efforts are based on attracting interest and business from other financial institutions rather than consumers and I am yet to come across a bank using social media to acheive this ?
      anyoen got any ideas thoughts ?
    • Hello,

      Your list is very focused on traditional financial services (and the giant conglomerates in that category), but there are significant smaller players on the self-directed custodian side like PENSCO, Equity Trust, Sterling Trust, etc., making heavy use of blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter. Some links:

      http://www.selfdirectedira.com (PENSCO's blog)
      http://www.trustetc.com/blog (Equity Trust's blog)

      There are several groups on LinkedIn related to these companies -- PENSCO group, Self-directed IRA group led by Entrust, IRAAA group (IRA Association of America).

      Lastly, want to put in a plug for my client Sterling Pacific Financial's new blog:

      http://www.sterlpac.com/blog (Sterling Vision)

      They're a real estate lender and trust deed investment company.

      Social media is really picking up for these smaller/mid-size companies at a faster rate than for the big guys, I suspect ....
    • This is a truly great list. I'm doing some research on just this topic and found this truly useful. Let me know if you're ever in london for catch up! twitter.com/JoshFeld
    • ING also has a YouTube channel dedicated to their F1 Car

      http://www.youtube.com/user/INGExplains
    • Declaration of interest here - tooting one's own horn

      The Citywire Blog for UK financial advisers has fast become the industry's watering hole where advisers discuss topics ranging from investments to technology and regulation. The UK's regulatory authority, the FSA, has used it to get feedback on new initiatives.

      http://www.citywire.co.uk/adviser/-/blogs/the-n...
    • I'll be updating this list soon
    • Test
    • No real-world examples, but Twitter would be a great vehicle to push out stock performance and interest rates, as well as Tip of the Day items to help folks increase their financial IQ.
    • Nice post Jeremiah, it's interesting to see how social media is being applied to a complex and highly regulated industry like finance.

      Jeremy Newman, the global CEO of accounting firm BDO (and a client of mine) has used his blog over the past couple of years to http://blog.e-bdo.com/ to set out his views on accounting regulations and how they need to change to mitigate the risk of another economic crash of the scale we've just experienced.

      Jeremy finds the blog invaluable for making sure his views on quite a sophisticated topic are communicated clearly and accurately.
    • With such a changing time it is difficult to predict the future changes to business practices, and even the changes in the world economy. I read on a blog the other day the largest population of english speakers are China... what a shocker( for me anyway). As well as the way China is attacking the global consumer market, and the wests' all aboard mentality , leads me to the conclusion that perhaps we should not be the targets to these businesses , but rather the new rising elite and visionaries of the economic world that appear to be getting richer. Does this mean we will eventually get poorer?
    • staffing1
      Some useful links to consider for my finance blog. Thanks.
      www.staffingpower.com
    • skintreatment
      Unless you want to be in the finance business, avoid lending money to anyone, especially people you know. If you can afford it, just give money to those who need it. No strings, no IOUs, no need to collect. The person you give it to will also likely stop trying to borrow from you out of sheer embarrasment.

      Unlike if you lend to someone in need, you just recruited a borrower for life. Some people just can’t get out of the crap they’re in even if they had the means to fix it already. The attention they crave from people who commiserate (and lend them more money) is what matters.

      They will deny this of course.
      http://www.b2bcfo.com/forensic_accounting/exper...
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