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

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

    • 114 Replies to “Ongoing list of Social Media Efforts from Banks, Credit Card, Financial Institutions and Lenders”

    1. 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.

    2. 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)

    5. 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…

    6. 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…

    7. Web 2.0 and Social Media represent the future of all business, and it's obvious to me that Banks, Credit Card, finance companies in Dallas, and Lenders are investing in it. I recently heard of an airline announcing its offers on twitter, and I was very pleased to see Skittle's site turned into a Social Media interactive portal.

    9. 'Myvault' link is wrong.
      Thanks for the post 🙂 Very useful for selling social media to financial clients here in India. They're all blown over when they see what's happening internationall.y

    10. 'Myvault' link is wrong.
      Thanks for the post 🙂 Very useful for selling social media to financial clients here in India. They're all blown over when they see what's happening internationall.y

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    14. Social media has become the super tool for marketing and advertising. Everybody wants know to make use of social media. But I have to underline some aspects that were always true: ethics… Where did ethics disappear? I mean, why does a bank need social media marketing? Banks already have more then they can handle… but the greed.. that is a problem.
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    15. Social media support from banks is something that I for one as a costumer have been longing for for a while now. A good connection between the banking system and social media has in my opinion mostly positive effects, mainly when it comes to information. A lot of people, before the crisis in the economy, had very little awareness when it came to their accounts and their money in general, so we shouldn't think of this only in a negative way.
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