OnLine Banking (part 2).

• Author: BONHAM, NICOLE
• Position: Interview with Wells Fargo VP John Nelson - Brief Article - Interview

John Nelson, Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo, now offering financial services in all 50 states, announced last year it wold merge with National Bancorp of Alaska Inc., owner of National Bank of Alaska.

With Wells Fargo already well integrated into the world of "wired" banking, we asked Wells Fargo Executive Vice President John Nelson about his predictions for the future of electronic-based commerce and banking.

ABM: What is your forecast for this new banking and commerce trend? With one report suggesting 10 million home-banking users by 2001, what role and priority does e-banking constitute in an institution's development and strategic planning? In essence, is it here to stay--and perhaps to dominate the personal banking of the future?

Nelson: Because personal computers have become so prevalent in both the workplace and in the home, we feel that e-banking is definitely here to stay.

At Wells Fargo, e-banking is considered a major distribution channel for us. Currently more than 1.7 million of our customers bank with us online, and that number increases daily. By 2002, we expect our Internet banking customer base to reach 2.5 million.

Still, we do not consider e-banking to be the only way our customers will reach us in the future. We want to offer our customers access to financial information and services wherever and whenever they want, from walking into a store or calling us on the phone to logging on to a computer or handheld device.

ABM: Have banks mostly ironed out their bugs? What were some of the lessons learned?

Nelson: Wells Fargo began offering online banking in 1989. In 1995, Wells Fargo became the first bank to deliver banking services on the Web by offering Internet access.

In other words, we have years of experience behind us already in this area, as opposed to some of our competitors who are just now starting to offer e-banking. We have continued to build our staffing and computer capacity as our customer base has expanded in order to accommodate customers' needs.

ABM: Obviously, the customer's strongest concern is that of security. The General Accounting Office last year concluded that Internet banking is inherently riskier than conventional banking. The GAO also reported to Congress that the e-banking...