Online Banking

What is online banking?

If you're like most people, you've heard a lot about online banking but probably haven't tried it yourself. You still pay your bills by mail and deposit checks at your bank branch, much the way your parents did. You might shop online for a loan, life insurance or a home mortgage, but when it comes time to commit, you feel more comfortable working with your banker or an agent you know and trust.

Online banking isn't out to change your money habits. Instead, it uses today's computer technology to give you the option of bypassing the time-consuming, paper-based aspects of traditional banking in order to manage your finances more quickly and efficiently.

Origin of online banking

The advent of the Internet and the popularity of personal computers presented both an opportunity and a challenge for the banking industry.

For years, financial institutions have used powerful computer networks to automate millions of daily transactions; today, often the only paper record is the customer's receipt at the point of sale. Now that its customers are connected to the Internet via personal computers, banks envision similar economic advantages by adapting those same internal electronic processes to home use.

Banks view online banking as a powerful "value added" tool to attract and retain new customers while helping to eliminate costly paper handling and teller interactions in an increasingly competitive banking environment.

Brick-to-click banks

Today, most large national banks, many regional banks and even smaller banks and credit unions offer some form of online banking, variously known as PC banking, home banking, electronic banking or Internet banking. Those that do are sometimes referred to as "brick-to-click" banks, both to distinguish them from brick-and-mortar banks that have yet to offer online banking, as well as from online or "virtual" banks that have no physical branches or tellers whatsoever.

The challenge for the banking industry has been to design this new service channel in such a way that its customers will readily learn to use and trust it. After all, banks have spent generations earning our trust; they aren't about to risk that on a Web site that is frustrating, confusing or less than secure.

Most of the large banks now offer fully secure, fully functional online banking for free or for a small fee. Some smaller banks offer limited access or functionality; for instance, you may be able to view your account balance and history but not initiate transactions online. As more banks succeed online and more customers use their sites, fully functional online banking likely will become as commonplace as automated teller machines.

Virtual banks

If you don't mind foregoing the teller window, lobby cookie and kindly bank president, a "virtual" or e-bank, such as Virtual Bank or Giant Bank, may save you very real money. Virtual banks are banks without bricks; from the customer's perspective, they exist entirely on the Internet, where they offer pretty much the same range of services and adhere to the same federal regulations as your corner bank.

Virtual banks pass the money they save on overhead like buildings and tellers along to you in the form of higher yields, lower fees and more generous account thresholds.

The major disadvantage of virtual banks revolves around ATMs. Because they have no ATM machines, virtual banks typically charge the same surcharge that your brick-and-mortar bank would if you used another bank's automated teller. Likewise, many virtual banks won't accept deposits via ATM; you'll have to either deposit the check by mail or transfer money from another account.

Advantages of online banking

Convenience: Unlike your corner bank, online banking sites never close; they're available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and they're only a mouse click away.

Ubiquity: If you're out of state or even out of the country when a money problem arises, you can log on instantly to your online bank and take care of business, 24/7.

Transaction speed: Online bank sites generally execute and confirm transactions at or quicker than ATM processing speeds.

Efficiency: You can access and manage all of your bank accounts, including IRAs, CDs, even securities, from one secure site.

Effectiveness: Many online banking sites now offer sophisticated tools, including account aggregation, stock quotes, rate alerts and portfolio managing programs to help you manage all of your assets more effectively. Most are also compatible with money managing programs such as Quicken and Microsoft Money.

Disadvantages of online banking

Start-up may take time: In order to register for your bank's online program, you will probably have to provide ID and sign a form at a bank branch. If you and your spouse wish to view and manage your assets together online, one of you may have to sign a durable power of attorney before the bank will display all of your holdings together.

Learning curve: Banking sites can be difficult to navigate at first. Plan to invest some time and/or read the tutorials in order to become comfortable in your virtual lobby.

Bank site changes: Even the largest banks periodically upgrade their online programs, adding new features in unfamiliar places. In some cases, you may have to re-enter account information.

The trust thing: For many people, the biggest hurdle to online banking is learning to trust it. Did my transaction go through? Did I push the transfer button once or twice? Best bet: always print the transaction receipt and keep it with your bank records until it shows up on your personal site and/or your bank statement.

Buisness

Your business is vulnerable to claims from both employees and customers, so in addition to making your business premises as safe as possible, the following types of insurance cover offer protection from compensation claims and for damage to your own property.Employers Liability Insurance Required by law if you have employees, this type of insurance protects you from claims from staff who have been injured or made ill at work through the fault of your business.Publicly Liability Insurance.The nature of your business means that customers will be visiting your premises to shop, and if they happen to have an accident and injure themselves whilst there, you might end up facing a claim if it was your fault.A customer might, for example, trip on a carelessly discarded box or item that has fallen from an overstocked shelf. If they hurt their back, or put their hand through a glass display resulting in a serious injury, they are likely to try to claim compensation.Public Liability Insurance covers such claims and usually any legal expenses involved.

Property Insurance

Property insurance provides protection against risks to property, such as fire, theft or weather damage. This includes specialized forms of insurance such as fire insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, home insurance or boiler insurance. Property is insured in two main ways open perils, or all risk perils, and named perils. Open perils cover all the causes of loss not specifically excluded or eliminated in the policy. Named perils require the actual cause of loss to be listed in the policy for insurance to be provided. The more common named perils include such damage causing events as fire, lightning, explosion and theft. Some of the more common exclusions include earthquake, flood, nuclear incidents, and war.

Life Insurance

There are various types of life insurance but they all have some common attributes. You pay an insurance company what are called premiums. At your death, the life insurance company pays an amount to the people you named in your policy, called beneficiaries. Also it’s interesting that if you named a beneficiary(ies) they’d receive the insurance amount free of income tax.Some types of life insurance have cash benefits available while you’re living. In these types, a portion of your premium goes into a cash reserve and builds on a tax deferred basis. You can access this money, called cash value. Some people use it to help education costs, enhance retirement cash flow or for any reason. Two of the most common types of permanent life insurance are called whole life insurance and universal life insurance.The different kinds of life insurance are described on the Lifeinsure.com site. To learn more about each type you can go to the navigation panel you click the type of life insurance to learn about. You can also visit the Education. Combined with investments, retirement and estate planning, a life insurance policy is a cornerstone of a sound financial plan. By looking into this area, you are making an intelligent and caring financial decision for your family. It is important that you have life insurance and have enough to protect those you care about. Get the insurance you should have.

Insurance

Insurance Norwich Union, is now part of CGNU plc, which was formed by the merger of CGU and Norwich Union in May 2000. CGNU is now the sixth largest insurer in the world. Its UK life, pensions and general insurance businesses still operate, under the Norwich Union brand, from offices in Norwich. It has an annual graduate recruitment programme. Also a number of graduates are recruited each year at clerical or similar grades, from which some may choose to progress into 'graduate track' careers. This 'side-door' entry into a graduate track career may also be possible in other financial organisations, including for example other insurance companies, the banks and indeed many other mainstream graduate recruiters.

INSURANCE & FINANCIAL

Proposed N131-103 Registration Requirements We are writing to provide the comments of Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services Inc. (Industrial Alliance) on the Notice and Request for Comment dated February 27,2008 ("the Notice"), on Proposed National Instrument 31-103 Registration Requirements, Proposed Companion Policy 31-153CP and Proposed Amendments to Multilateral Instrument 33-109 Registration Information published for public comment by the Canadian Securities Administrators ("CSA") (respectively, the "Proposed Instrument" and the Proposed Companion Policy" and collectively, the "Proposal"). Industrial Alliance has a national footprint in the distribution of financial services in Canada. Through our three broker-dealers: IA Securities Inc., a nationally registered securities dealer and IDA member, as well as FundEX Investments Inc. and Investia Financial Services Inc., both of which are nationally registered mutual fund dealers and members of the MFDA, we currently represent over 2000 licensed advisors. We will limit our comments to those that we feel will specifically affect the way in which our advisors and our firm will be able to service our more than 300,000 clients. At a high level, Industrial Alliance is in complete support of regulatory proposals that provide consistent treatment of the consumer experience, greater clarity and consistency of rules, and efficiencies in process.

Industrial Alliance fully endorses the CSA's stated aim of the Proposal - "to create a flexible and administratively efficient [registration] regime with reduced regulatory burden". We also commend the CSA for its efforts in achieving the level of uniformity and harmonisation of the current myriad of registration-related rules. Given the historical differing positions taken by the various CSA members on registrant regulation, the Proposals are indeed a welcome achievement on the part of the CSA. We support the objective of the Proposed Instrument to harmonise, streamline and modernise the registration regime for dealers and dvisors across the CSA jurisdictions. In addition, we would note the importance of achieving greater harmony in the rules, and application of rules, of the Self Regulatory Organizations (SROs), whose role will be critical to the shaping of a consistent investor experience.

There are elements of the Proposal, however, that are of concern to us. The three broad areas of concern that we touch on from this perspective include: dealer-advisor registration; compliance and suitability; and the Client Relationship Model. On the proposals relating to dealer registration, we support the retention of the Mutual Fund Dealer category. We further support the proposals to ensure adequate transition periods and the permission of grandfathering of proficiency requirements where appropriate.

The Proposed Instrument appears to confine the business of a Mutual Fund Dealer, a position that does not properly reflect the realities of the distribution business, which has broadened significantly in scope in recent years. We are concerned by the language in the Proposal restricting mutual fund dealers and their advisors "solely" to the distribution of mutual funds. Professional financial advisors are engaged in the analysis of the financial situations of their clients, and in recommending solutions for their investment needs from a wide array of products including GICs, Principal-Protected Notes, Mutual Funds, and Segregated Funds. The Proposal's language should be modified to reflect these realities. The Proposal introduces a new category of registration: the Exempt Market Dealer. We require more discussion about the regulatory oversight structure that would be faced by mutual fund dealers that also distribute exempt market products. It is our view that the registration regime should recognise the higher level of oversight that membership in an SRO brings, and accordingly MFDA Members should be permitted to sell exempt market products without the additional requirement to register as Exempt Market Dealers.