In the competitive world of consumer banking, financial institutions need to embrace new ways of doing business both to attract new customers and keep the ones they have. For many, Web 2.0 technologies are the answer. However, implementing these solutions introduces risk, so banks must ensure appropriate protection is in place when making the move.
Web 2.0, A Primer
While Web 2.0 is not necessarily a new term, it is nebulous and, for those considering implementing, can be difficult to understand. Technology publication house O’Reilly takes five full pages to define Web 2.0, while Wikipedia supplies the following:
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Web 2.0 is a trend in World Wide Web technology, and web design, a second generation of web based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies, which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users. |
A key characteristic of Web 2.0 deployments is that they offer some form of collaboration or sharing between members of a user community. In the banking world, applications include financial planning blogs (i.e., The Simple Dollar) and net worth trackers (i.e., NetworthIQ). As financial institutions seek to deploy tools such as these and other Web 2.0-enabled technologies to their customers, the inherent weaknesses of the technology need to be addressed. Otherwise, what was deployed as a way to enhance the customer experience and raise satisfaction levels could end up doing the exact opposite.
