Lloyds has taken the plunge and sent the black horse racing towards
a euro-based international online future.
Banking is an unlikely sector to be seen to go against traditional
thinking. Yet companies like Prudential and Halifax have chosen to
forego their strong brand awareness to market online offerings
under new identities.
This approach was also taken by Lloyds TSB when it was looking to
create a presence in Europe with its new online banking service.
The company chose to use the name evolveBank.com. The decision was
based on a number of factors, says Bob Avery, evolveBank.com's IT
director, although "it was far more of a marketing issue than
anything else".
A key consideration was that the company already had an online
banking arm using the Lloyds TSB name. However, Avery says this is
merely an extension of its traditional banking service, offering
customers another means of accessing their accounts, whereas
"evolveBank is a different model - it's a direct channel bank". It
has no branches, so operating costs are lower. The idea is that
these cost savings can be passed on to customers in the form of
better interest and improved services.
Avery says evolveBank has been pitched squarely at young,
reasonably successful, Internet-savvy people who want direct
banking services at a lower cost.
"The Lloyds TSB brand isn't well known in Europe anyway," he adds,
although the company does have a presence on the continent. For
example, in Spain, the country where it chose to launch first,
Lloyds TSB has 28 branches.
Avery is also keen to point out that the new service is underpinned
by the Lloyds TSB name - the company's distinctive black horse logo
features on the evolveBank Web site.
The story began in mid 1999 when the company conducted a
feasibility study. A number of systems integrators were approached
before Lloyds TSB chose PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), which
tendered a bid based on Sanchez banking software at the back end
and customer relationship management (CRM) software from
Broadvision at the front. "PWC's role was to make sure it all
worked together," says Avery. "There were a lot of people
involved."
As well as PWC, employees from Sanchez and Broadvision were
involved and staff from Lloyds were on hand to oversee the project
and deal with key standards issues such as security, capacity,
back-up and recovery. Consultants from other companies, such as
First Data Europe and Equifax, were also involved, along with
Teletech, which helped to set up the customer contact centre based
in Glasgow. "We're not a telephone bank but customers can call up
and we do technical walk-throughs," Avery explains.
Spain was chosen as the first country in which to try the business,
and the Web site went live last November. Before that the service
was subjected to stringent testing, including a three-month period
where it was road tested by the team's friends and family based in
Spain.
Avery says there were lots of teething problems, but nothing really
major. "It was our de-bugging phase," he says. "We didn't want to
make the same mistakes as previous online banking offerings and we
had to adhere to Lloyds TSB's standards." Since it went live, Avery
claims the Web site has had 99% availability.
Two key areas in the testing were capacity and resilience. Other
considerations included how to get documentation to the customers
and how to tie in with the manual processes. Instead of receiving
registration packs manually, customers print off registration forms
locally before signing and returning them by post. This cuts down
on the number of steps in the registration process. "The more steps
you have, the more customers you lose," says Avery. "And our
research showed that they wanted to do everything in one go." He
says only 5% of its customers now request to receive registration
forms by post.
EvolveBank reuses as much of Lloyds TSB's IT systems and software
as possible and the Spanish operation is actually run from Lloyds
TSB's computer centres in the UK. "If something is good why not use
it?" he asks. "Why re-invent the wheel?"
This centralised model also tied in with the firm's plans to launch
in other European countries. "It makes economic sense, gives more
control and gives better speed to market," says Avery.
Essentially, all the company has to do to tailor its offering to
additional countries is change the presentation and address various
content management and regional issues. As it has been based on the
euro as a currency since day one, the changeover to euros will not
cause any significant problem either.
EvolveBank services are further tailored to individual customers
using eCRM. "That's very much what Broadvision delivers to us,"
says Avery.
Using eCRM it can implement targeted marketing campaigns "within
days or hours". It also helps to manage content on the Web site.
Customers are greeted by name and targeted with offers or
information they might be interested in. They can also access
financial advice. Avery says the site resembles a financial portal.
As well as the regular credit account, savings account and credit
card services, evolveBank customers can "sweep" money from one
account to another. This automated service is based on rules set up
by the customers themselves. "The functionality is quite rich
compared to high-street banks," he claims.
A launch in Italy is planned for next year but the company will
wait until the euro bottoms out and people have got used to using
the new currency.
Lloyds TSB will also launch an offering in the UK in the first
quarter of 2002 under yet another name, Goldfish Financial
Services. This will be a joint venture with Centrica, which runs
the Goldfish credit card. Lloyds TSB will have a 30% stake in the
company. "The first three months of next year will certainly be
interesting," says Avery.