Commonwealth upgrades NetBank

Commonwealth Bank yesterday launched the latest upgrade of its NetBank online banking platform. Customers will be allowed to customise their NetBank home page so that the applications they use most frequently will appear in a format they choose.

The bank has given each of its online brands, including CommSec, CommBiz, CommInsure and Colonial First State the same "presentation layer", so that a single sign-on provides access to accounts with all of those businesses.

CBA head of retail banking Ross McEwan said customers' use of online services was changing and the NetBank developments reflect that.

Commonwealth has 4.4 million registered NetBank users, with 2.6 million of them active. It is receiving 60,000 applications for registration a month.

McEwan said users were becoming more sophisticated. Almost two million customers have taken up two-factor authentication, with most preferring an SMS alert to a token. More than a million have opted to receive account statements electronically.

McEwan said the bulk of online usage was making payment and getting information such as account balances.

Increasingly, the bank is looking to encourage what it calls "simple sales" online.  A simple sale is one where the bank already knows the customer and can process an application for an increase in a credit card limit, a home loan top-up or a switch from fixed to variable without needing to get the customer into a branch.

To facilitate this, the bank is building online delivery into the planning of new products, such as the first home saver account and new term deposit offerings.

It is also working on greater integration between the online channel and contact centres.  Customers who are having trouble with an online session can call the contact centre and contact centre staff are able to view the customer's banking session to see what is happening.

The bank is also expanding the range of alerts and notifications it sends out. About 60,000 customers make use of mobile banking services each month.