For Swiss financial institutions online banking means services on the internet, mobile if need be. Foreign institutions are taking the lead. They offer their customers a «digital experience», with one Austrian bank in particular attracting attention for its winning formula.

George offers the most modern banking. That is the advertising claim of Erste Bank Austria for its internet banking service. In fact, in the eyes of many experts, George is the best online banking presence in Europe. Falk Kohlmann, Head of Banking Trends & Innovation at Swisscom, agrees.

First of all, George offers modern presentation, Kohlmann tells finews.ch. It is simple and intuitive to use. “As well as that, it offers numerous personalization options for different functions on the user interface. And George is platform based. That means the functions can be continually extended with new plug-ins,“ Kohlmann says.

George as a yardstick

Falk Kohlmann’s opinion carries weight among Swiss banks thanks to his role as leader of the Swisscom Think Tank ‘E-foresight’, which provides numerous Swiss banks with trend analysis, research and data, as well as organizing workshops and round-table talks for managers and directors.

E-foresight has already presented George as best practice to many banks and managers. “Swiss banks could take George as an example or at least individual functions from it,“ Kohlmann says.

Digital experience is lacking

It doesn’t take long to get a grasp of the e-banking scene in Switzerland. Swiss e-banking offers the most important banking services, such as account overview, payment and trading functions, to some extent also research and communications options. But as a user, you are entering a rather stiff and somber banking world. In short, the digital experience is lacking.

The same applies to the different banking apps, basically a copies of the e-banking solutions, because they are conceived for smaller displays. George is something different.

It should be fun

The fun element is important because the user is being led into a digital world, already known to him or her through Facebook, Apple, Google, Twitter or Amazon. One of the goals of the developers was that George should be fun. But why the name George?

The working title for the project was ‘Netbanking 4.0’ but the development head Boris Marte wasn’t satisfied. He felt the name didn’t have a good ring to it. “Someone said: ‘So call it George’,“ Marte told the Austrian newspaper Standard (article in German). And that’s what it stayed.

Personalization

Marte believes that George is a new definition of internet banking. Not that the basic functions are being newly invented, of course. George is also only able to provide account management, credit cards, data, payment services on PC as well as on mobile.

But the visual appearance of the offering recreates the look and feel of a social network. Usage is also simple and many functions are personalized. On top of the basic package, users can also download additional functions in the ‘George+Store’.

Naturally these additional functions cost something, for example the finance-manager at 89 cent. But in this way George has a business model that is clearly inspired by the digital world.

The development process behind George has become a working lesson for financial institutions. Erste Bank set up a development hub for the service. The bank’s previously existing e-banking concept is not being drawn on much. It is as if George is being developed on a green field site.

Customers and interested parties can even contribute ideas through a community platform, and test some new applications in advance. Some users have also been invited to workshops with designers and developers at the banks. A number of concrete workable solutions have come from these exchanges.

Freely copied

According to the development head Boris Marte the programming and design of George was not the greatest challenge. For this they freely copied the existing services of other banks. “The greatest challenge lay in changing the internal processes of the bank,” he told the online portal Futurezone (article in German).