Great Sites: Citibank

Citigroup Inc., Citibank's parent company, believes that one-stop shopping is the key to building customer loyalty and creating new business. The company uses its Web portal, Citibank.com, to make sure customers don't have to go beyond its bounds for services ranging from online mortgage payments to insurance quotes.

Citibank.com has 9 million user accounts. A year ago, Citibank became the first financial institution online to offer aggregated account services, through My Citi, a personal account that lets consumers consolidate all the services in one interface with one sign-on. Customers can pay credit-card bills or loans from their online checking accounts. The Travelers Insurance Co. in Hartford, Conn., a 1998 Citigroup acquisition, offers quotes and information on life, auto, and homeowners insurance. And SSB Access, Citigroup subsidiary Salomon Smith Barney's investment resource, has tripled its user base by offering free services such as wireless access and portfolio tracking. A Citibank tool called c2it, which charges per-transaction fees, lets customers send payments to anyone via the Internet.

Consumers today are looking to sites such as Citibank's that offer value and convenience, says Paul Jamieson, director of banking and payment services at Gomez Advisors, which ranks Citibank as the best overall of 20 Internet banks it evaluated. Citibank answers the convenience call with a well-designed site that has easy-to-use menus and quick-to-load pages. It's also adept at customizing and personalizing. Customers can determine what their account home pages look like and can include content from other sites. For example, customers can set their pages to display their American Express, America Online, savings, and frequent-flier accounts. "Other sites are more product-centric, where the user has very little latitude in making the site adapt to personal needs," Jamieson says.

Even noncustomers can use c2it, as well as services such as the Health Checkup, an interactive exercise that lets consumers input financial data and goals in return for a plan--Citibank products included--to achieve those goals. Each of the site's financial-services areas operates a 24-hour toll-free number. And the site offers detailed E-mail forms that help visitors pinpoint their customer-service needs.

Citibank can still make the site more appealing. The biggest problem is that customers can't open bank accounts by funding them with credit cards; they must print out applications and mail them to Citibank or take them to a local branch. Due-diligence practices and the need for customer signatures keep Citibank from offering such a service, but that may change with digital signatures.

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