What is Virtual Banking?

Virtual Banking Worlds Provide Tangible Lessons

It's a fact of doing business — even the most useful banking apps will not get as much screen time as Angry Birds. But bankers can learn from popular games and use similar technology as part of their customer interactions.

Some vendors, including Hewlett-Packard Co., are even building gamelike digital branches for banks.

These venues could appeal to niches such as young adults or early adopters of new technology, said Nicole Sturgill, a research director with TowerGroup in Needham, Mass.

"There will be a certain segment of the population that will never want to touch it and then there will be a segment of the population that likes the video-game feel of it," Sturgill said. The key is tailoring the program to that audience.

Altra Federal Credit Union in La Crosse, Wis., is one of four financial institutions that have contracts with Thwakk Inc., a provider of a banking game world called Mo'doh Island. It has been using a customized version to provide financial education to students at area high schools, said Lori Horstman, the education manager at Altra.

Students create avatars — digital representations of themselves — that they use online to perform different tasks within the island, which uses some of Altra's branding.

The primary focus is on providing important financial lessons to students, though a side benefit is the ability to make future potential customers aware of the 68,000-member credit union, Horstman said.

"From a marketing perspective, it definitely helps us build relationships with the youth that maybe wouldn't see us otherwise," Horstman said.

HP, partnering with the communications software company Avaya Inc., also offers banks a "virtual branch" product that they can use for marketing products and services, doing remote meetings with customers, training employees and performing other activities.

The 3-D environment, based on a platform called web.Alive that HP and Avaya demonstrated this month at a conference in New York, allows bankers and their customers to navigate avatars through a computerized replica of a customizable bank branch.

Continued Tomorrow

http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/176_81/virtual-banking-worlds-provide-tangible-lessons-1036619-1.html

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