Groupon announced its first-ever quarterly profit this week, but its stock is down more than 25% on the year. The business model for Groupon — and competitor LivingSocial, among others — is flawed in so many ways. For starters, merchants that take part in a daily deal give up as much as 75% of each daily deal sale to participate. This creates a high participation cost for the merchant, which does not know whether the daily deal will result in an incremental lift in overall sales from new customers or repeat business. Groupon and LivingSocial have yet to report the … Continue Reading →

Recent natural catastrophes in the Northeastern United States have brought a renewed focus to an issue that has dogged the North American Property & Casualty (P&C) insurance industry for years. On the surface, the problem is about the denial of some claims for water- and weather-related damage. The deeper issue relates to the lack of transparency insurance companies provide about coverage details. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal calls attention to the fact that, contrary to common belief, policy language in property insurance policies is not at all standard. The author advises consumers to ask a lot of … Continue Reading →

Do Gen Yers know of Rodney Dangerfield? Baby boomers think him as a great stand-up comedian, and Gen Xers revere him for his part in the movie that so many of them consider to be the greatest of all-time: Caddyshack. For many of us, we’ll always remember him by his tag line: “I don’t get no respect.” Which leads us, naturally, to e-mail marketing. Talk about getting no respect. If you listen to the social media gurus, e-mail is dead, and any firm still doing e-mail marketing is a dinosaur that should be put out to pasture. Thankfully, there are a lot of … Continue Reading →

Banks have been working on transforming their organizations from being product-focused to customer-centric for years; they have lofty goals of helping their customers make financial decisions across all areas of their financial lives. But for customers to trust their banks with important financial decisions, banks will need to demonstrate that they are truly interested in helping customers make the right financial choices. Following the events of the last couple of years, customers have been left with a contrary impression (e.g., unfair overdraft charging practices, poor credit card disclosures, and significant gaps in banks’ mortgage foreclosure processes). While changing the website may … Continue Reading →

In the areas I cover―the institutional investment management and brokerage businesses―firms are cautious and questioning the value-add for the B2B sector. Much of what I see posted in social media or imagine as relevant to institutions appears behind a firm’s firewall on their private website. In fact, institutional providers prefer client portals, which reinforce the personal relationships that institutions value. In this private venue, clients have access to account data while firms can also push out blog posts, podcasts, and videos specific to those clients’ interests. Customization and privacy are what institutions value. Institutional staffs do like to share their … Continue Reading →

Has the moment finally arrived when the bastion of business development will move off the golf course and onto the Internet? Has the Internet equalized the business field for those of us with an abysmal golf game? Could Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace and Blogger become the apex of business activity? We’ve been here before. Remember when the Internet first hit business? We were frantic to establish a website. E-mail? That was actually quite a thrill; no more rolling into voicemail trying to catch someone…we could even avoid talking to someone we weren’t particularly fond of.  Next, we moved to instant … Continue Reading →

I attended FinnovateFall (Oct 4 and 5), where 56 companies large and small presented their latest technology innovations. Most of the solutions came from B2C firms, with a few B2B companies focused on small businesses, and one in particular (Ace Portal) addressing the private placement market. Solutions spanned product/service areas, ranging from bill payment to online investing. This post focuses on some of the most interesting solutions catering to the wealth management/financial planning space. Personal Financial Management (PFM) Among the many PFM solutions showcased, my pick is Bundle. The company provides a unique graphical display of a user’s transactions and … Continue Reading →