Welcome. My name is Mike Ellison and I am the EVP at Corporate Insight. We’re a firm that looks at the retail experience at a number of banking , mutual fund, and brokerage firms. From time to time, I’m going to be blogging on subjects related to retail banking - particularly the online customer experience. Much of what I will be talking about will come from our experiences in maintaining live accounts at the firms we follow in our research. When we uncover something I feel would generate some lively discussion, I’ll post it and hopefully you’ll chime in with your opinions.

To open our discussion, Bank of America recently launched a new feature for SafePass that actually allows customers to use the SafePass on a device they likely already carry around - their cell phone (they are evidently developing a card as well, but it is not yet available). Once customers have set up the SafePass system, they will be asked to request a six-digit SafePass code, which will be sent to a previously registered mobile device, each time they (or anyone else) attempts to execute one of the protected functions (e.g. transfer accounts, bill pay, P2P transfers, etc. - users can choose the functions they want to require SaffPass authentication, a nice feature). This is an excellent compromise between security and convenience - and as an added bonus, customers that sign up for this service are given higher transfer limits.

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