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Banking and Cards Research

Digging into the Customer Experience: Banking and Credit Cards

Corporate Insight’s Bank Monitor, Credit Card Monitor and Small Business Card Monitor provide ongoing coverage of the products, websites and overall customer experience offered by the nation’s leading banks and card issuers. Our value-added banking and credit card research digs deeply to evaluate the retail and small business customer experience.


Alert Centers PDF Print E-mail
Alert Centers are a valuable feature within online banking, allowing clients to monitor their account activity and security remotely, without the need to constantly log in to their online banking account. In this edition of Bank Monitor Report, we investigate the capabilities of each firm’s Alert Center in order to assess the ease with which clients can set up and maintain alerts, as well as the actual alert options provided and customization abilities.

In this Bank Monitor report, we looked at both types of account and security alerts offered to account holders by each bank, as well Alert History and Delivery Options, in order to establish which firm provides clients with the best overall center. As we investigated each bank’s Alert Center, we focused on the following issues:
  • Are both account alerts and security alerts available?
  • Can clients select the format of the alert emails?
  • Are alerts delivered to an Alert History within the online center?
All but two of the banks tracked by Bank Monitor offer some form of an Alert Center, giving clients the ability to receive notifications regarding information about their accounts via email or mobile phone. Of the remaining 14 firms, users can access the alert center through dedicated tabs or sub-tabs within the main navigational menu, or through links within Customer Service sections. Additionally, 44% of banks offer a daily account summary or daily/weekly account balance updates, while all 14 firms offer clients the ability to set up a user-defined balance threshold alert.

Among the firms that offer dedicated Alert Centers, 71% provide security alerts on their private site, with alerts that are automatically sent, notifying clients of changes made to their personal settings or suspicious activity on the account. However, only three firms in this report give clients the ability to disable these automatic alerts online.

Delivery options of alert notifications are also an important aspect. In addition to all firms offering delivery to at least one email, 79% of firms allow alerts to be sent to multiple email addresses. Additionally, 11 firms let clients add mobile numbers to their delivery profiles.

Additional key findings include:
  • Account History or Inbox is offered by 70% of banks
  • Two firms offer an alert notifying when a CD matures
  • Seven firms offer alert suspension, while three allow clients to enter a user-defined period of time for alerts to be suspended