Can a Website Break the Bonds of Banks?

Arguably, the greatest hurdle to consumer choice in banks is the difficulty switching from institution to institution.

Online banking has made switching banks all the more challenging, because its bill-pay function keeps consumers from moving on. After all, who wants to reenter all those recurring payments?

One site, BankSwitcher.com, is seeking to help consumers switch from bank to bank – with varying results. The need for the site seems to be more acute today as the financial crisis has prompted more consumers to seek out alternative financial institutions.

BankSwitcher.com outlines the switch process for customers in three steps. To begin, customers are asked to upload their transaction history from their current institution. The user then chooses the deposits and payments they wish to switch over, and BankSwticher.com provides a checklist which includes the forms needed to switch over accounts and instructions that are required to complete the switch.

BankSwitcher.com was launched in Sept. 2007.

Rob Rubin, the site’s chief executive, says traffic on BankSwitcher.com has picked up with the financial crisis.

“The financial crisis has prompted consumers to make banking changes,” he says. “The biggest growth has been within the last three months, traffic increased 25%.”

Banking analysts were not surprised.

“Right now people are nervous about banking,” says George Tubin, senior research director at TowerGroup, a consultancy. “Many are moving their money around from bank to bank because of fears of insolvency, people searching for better rates and security.”

So is BankSwitcher.com up to the challenge? Not really. I visited BankSwitcher.com to demo the switch process. After entering my bank’s name manually (it was not included in the drop-down list), I was asked to upload a copy of my financial statement. I stopped my site visit right there. Though the site claims personal information is protected by firewalls and is not written to any disks, that was not enough reassurance for me.

As a user, I have no real way of knowing what is done with my information. The security did not meet my standards. I mean, these were my personal banking statements, after all.

I cannot say that BankSwitcher.com is the tool that will unhinge consumers from their banks. And yet, the effort is appreciated. Eventually, a vehicle will come to market that will allow for full consumer choice. That’ll be a true switch in banking.