Tag Archives: netbanker

Guest blogger on NetBanker.

If things have been a little quieter around here than usual, I have a good excuse. I have started guest blogging on one of the biggest and best FI blogs around, netbanker.com.

Jim Bruene runs a great blog, his insights and research into how FIs use (and underuse) the online channel is amazing. I have long been a fan and follower, and was happy to finally meet him face to face in Arizona in April at Net.Finance. And now I’ll be adding to his blog a few times a month. It’s an incredible honour for me, as this is the first time Jim’s ever had anyone besides him write on his blog, and because he has 6,000+ RSS subscribers (to my mere 40).

I’ll be writing about how FIs can better use the social web and brand themselves online. I’ll try and write from an insider, client-side perspective. I have the blessing from the folks at Vancity to do this, which is nice not to need the typical “these thoughts are my own and do represent…” disclaimers.

My inaugural post is entitled Finding your way to the Social Web. It’s an examination of how FIs could better leverage the Social Web, and uses a proposed Bank of America case study. You can see all my posts collected together here.

Jim welcomed me aboard very warmly, and I appreciate that. I’ll be linking to my posts on NetBanker from my blog everytime I add a new post, so stay tuned.

Finances on Facebook

Jim Bruene has a great post on netbanker.com about the rise of financial services on Facebook.

Watching the explosion of content, and users, at Facebook, may be the most interesting thing we’ve seen since the rise of the commercial Web in 1995/1996.

Jim writes about the opportunities that exist for FIs to sponsor Facebook applications like ChipIn. Jim documents how ChipIn works really well using screenshots. Nicely done. It’s exciting to watch this new explosion of financial services within Facebook. It really democratizes how people can access money.

And I’m not just mentioning this because he gave Vancity’s Bike Share a nice plug (although it didn’t hurt).

Discovering kiva.org

In all the recent posts I’ve been reading about peer-to-peer lending, including the excellent reporting by Jim Bruene at NetBanker and Colin Henderson at The Bankwatch and CommunityLend, I hadn’t come across Kiva.org.

I’m very excited about social personal finance and think it may well change the way people exchange money when they just need to borrow or invest a small to medium amount and don’t want to bother with a bank or credit union.

But tonight my aunt showed me Kiva.org, and I got to admit I was a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know what it was. It’s an amazing concept where anyone can make microloans to people in the developing world who need small amounts of money to start an enterprise. According to their website:

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

You can cash out when you’re repaid or reinvest it into a new opportunity. I think this is genius. Did everyone else know about this and somehow I’m the last to the party? Hard to be shown up by my aunt after all…

I started tonight by investing $25. Kiva.org asks you for a 10% addition as a donation to keep them running. That’s optional. You can pay by PayPal or credit card. When you’re done you can easily send the info about the cause you donated to to your email list to spread the word. Nicely done.

Here’s who I donated to: Massan Aziado of Togo. Fantastic and inspiring!