I recently read a summary of a report from Forrester who state that only 31% of British adults bank online despite 75% regularly shopping online - to quote Benjamin Ensor, principal analyst at Forrester Research, "By international standards, the U.K. is an online banking laggard." He then goes on to say that "The U.K. also has a relatively large number of quitters, with about two million people saying that they used to use online banking but have given up".

Forrester state that a gradual rise in web users' confidence in online banking will improve this, but only relatively slowly over the next five years - So the question is what's wrong, and should we worry about it? 

I believe it all comes down to the the approach UK banks have taken to the Internet - many seem to perceive it as an low cost extension of their existing channels and very few take the opportunity to really offer something new and exciting for their customers.  Just think about your bank's web site and ask whether it could really be replaced by nothing more than secure web access to photocopies of your statements and you'll start to understand how disappointed people are when they logon.  Where is the value add for me?   My experience is that most consumers' use their bank's web site because going into the branch or calling the call centre is such an abysmal experience that there is no choice with the uniquely UK based reason that as a nation we are obsessed by chasing the best rate and many of these are on "Internet only" accounts.

So how to fix it?

I believe it's all about the user experience - make it differentiated, make it rich, allow the user to personalize the site and how they see their money, get them bought in to the bank as a source of information, advice and confidence and thus getting people to use the web because they love it.  This takes effort and it isn't something that can be done by a typical in-sourced (or out-sourced) IT team.  Instead this is the opportunity for designers, UX experts and groups who have a deep understanding of people to come into their own and start to innovate on our screens.

I have many user experience "hates" - here are my top 10:

1. ID&V.  Here IT security must be playing a joke on us - according to my research there are now over 120 different combinations in use today to sign in to a UK financial services web site.  Yes, I understand anti-Phishing solutions, avoidance of key recorders, hardware tokens (actually it's my business to understand them), but the industry is completely out of control and users HATE it.
2. The inability to DO anything with your statements other than look at them.  I can't search, very few sites allow spend analysis by category, extremely few show geographical data or extended data and (with the exception of MINT.COM in the USA) I've yet to see anyone do comparative spending between groups of users.
3. With a few exceptions account alerts are still a no-no.  Why can't I get a simple text message on my mobile when I'm going overdrawn or when a payment has come in?
4. Undo, or the complete lack of it.  Remarkably few banking sites are truly online, and even for those that are, most transactions that impact your account take days to clear through our banking system, so why is it that undo is such a no-no?
5. Banking terminology restricting what I can do.  To most (all?) consumers a direct debit, standing order, BACS transfer, international money transfer, bill payment etc are all the same thing - please can I pay person/company X amount Y at time Z.  Amazon don't ask me to order the book differently depending on which warehouse it's in, so why does a bank?
6. No history of what I've done.  Actually I expect a lot more - both what I did and when it actually completed (i.e. when the money actually arrived in the destination account).
7. In most cases, no chat or secure mail feature to provide help with complex features or functionality that's not yet supported.
8. No personalization of my experience.  With the notable exception of the 'Saving pot' concept we've implemented for Principality Building Society, there are almost no bank web sites that allow you to customize your experience or the way you view your money.
9. No separation of beginners and advanced users - the "one size fits all" mentality means new users get intimidated and advanced users are restricted.  Don't even get me started on why banking web sites are not DDA compliant, mobile compliant, don't work on Safari or Linux and the list goes on.
10. Finally, no WOW factor.  There are lot of e-commerce sites with WOW, lots of media sites with it, but banking sites?  You've got to be kidding.

Let me know what you think.

If you're a Microsoft .NET developer with experience of commercial level development in ASP.NET, C# 2.0 and have a real passion for delivering the best banking user experience over the web, please do get in touch with me with your CV.

We're based on the river in Kingston-on-Thames just to the south-west of London, UK.  You should expect to be based in our office so should live reasonably close or be prepared to relocate.  In the past 18 months our development teams have worked on projects for four of the top five UK banks, many building societies and other high profile projects.  With small highly performing teams we've delivered solutions that are highly secure, reliable and mission critical in the financial services world using the full range of Microsoft.NET technologies.  We're currently implementing projects in ASP.NET using .NET 3.5, WPF and Silverlight, WCF, WF, AJAX, LINQ, SQL 2005 so experience in some or all of these areas would be a plus.

If this sounds interesting, visit our web site at http://www.ie.com and get in touch.

Please - no agents.

I'm Chief Technology Officer for a UK based software company called Intelligent Environments.  We specialize in providing highly scalable and secure web solutions for retail banking products with customers such as HBOS, RBS, First Data, HSBC, The Bank of New York to name just a few.

As CTO, I spend most of my time looking at what new technology and processes are becoming available on the market and working to make sure that our customers are getting the best value software available on the market.  We've heavily invested in the Microsoft .NET platform and believe that it, coupled with a great development team, gives us a significant advantage competitive advantage in the market.

My other hat is as a board level director of our company, both in helping to manage the company and in working with many different partners in both business and technology.