Until a few weeks ago I was a holdout on making the switch to online banking. Call me paranoid, but having covered network technology (including, to a degree, the challenges of network security) for the past several years I was always sort of concerned that my computer would one day get infected with some key logging malware and someone would end up hacking into my accounts.
But recently I switched banks and ended up switching from IVR/ATM-based banking to all-online banking. I guess that's mainly because my new bank pushed me in that direction (I'm sure my new bank offers telephone banking but I never did see the toll free number on any of the materials I received in the mail). Plus, the improvements in online banking security in the past couple of years helped ease some of my concerns.
I have to say I'm quite satisfied with my online banking experience thus far. For one thing, I have greater control over my finances than I did using the telephone based system - plus it's nice to be able to view my finances in graphic form (as opposed to plain audio). Being able to see the numbers on screen seems to help me make decisions and complete tasks faster (for example I can see the balances of all my accounts on one screen).
But now that I've switched to online banking, I feel more confident about my finances and I don't feel the need to check as often as I did before. In effect, I'm saying making the switch has brought about a change in my behavior. Another thing I forgot to mention is that I no longer need to use the ATM machine as often. When I was doing my banking using the phone, I would usually do my transfers using the ATM machine because doing it using the IVR always seemed cumbersome and time-consuming. So, basically I was using the ATM machine as that graphical interface I now get from online banking. Except now I can do it at home, instead of going to the bank.
The thing I wonder about is the impact self-service banking has had on the call center industry. I'm sure the banking industry still accounts for a huge percentage of the call center industry - but I'm wondering how much it has shrunk as a result of the advent of self-service (and here I include IVR, ATM and online banking), because, let's face it, no industry has made greater strides in the area of self service than banking. I haven't seen any studies in recent years that provide a definitive measurement of the impact over the long run: For example, how many call center agents did the U.S. banking industry employ in 1980? 1990? 2000? 2009? I think it would be fascinating to see those numbers. It would be even more fascinating to see it broken down by the impact from the migration to specific technologies, i.e. ATM (which was introduced in the 1980s), IVR-based telephone banking (which was introduced in the late 1980s, early 1990s) and online banking (introduced in the late 1990s early 2000s).
If anyone out there can point me to such a study I'd really appreciate it ...
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