Mobile News

Veev offers customers immediate, personalised access to financial services within an environment that also features informational and lifestyle services. As an end to end solution, it provides full call centre support and problem tracking as well as multi-device access through mobile handsets such as Qualcomm’s 2700, equipped with Phone.com’s WAP browser, and PDAs such as the Palm Pilot. The Palm VII has not been targeted because it is seen as too proprietary as it relies on the Palm.Net network. Various factors combine to provide a wide customer reach.

Functionality–banking

* All banking accounts

– Cheques and saving

– MasterCard

– Personal line of credit

* Transfer funds between accounts

* Pay bills from account and setup new billers

* Customer service

– Cash advance

– Payment inquiry

– Order cheques

– Secure email customer service.

Functionality–brokerage

* Complete investment access

– Full service: Nesbitt Burns

– Discount: BMO InvestorLine

– Self defined: watchlists

* Real-time trading

* View portfolios: positions, valuation and transaction history

* North American exchanges: equities, indexes and mutual funds

* Stock alerts (email, pager, phone) * Charts.

Functionality–information and lifestyle services

* Shopping with Indigo

– Books, CDs, videos

– Top picks: NY Times bestsellers …

* Loyalty account management (air miles)

* News: headlines and full articles

– Global (Reuters) and regional (Canadian Press)

– User selected interest categories

– Watchlist: specific company or category

* Weather: global by city

* Daily horoscopes

* Device self enrolement.

Veev has placed a premium on integrating banking and trading through its Account Link service which turns a trading account into a high interest account with no annual fee. In addition, trading is linked to the bank card and funds transfer–it comes at no additional cost as an extension of the Everyday Bank Plan. The 724 Solutions mobile financial services platform uses a transaction and content gateway which connects to the financial institution’s existing infrastructure through a server using Open Financial Exchange (OFX) or Extensible Mark-up Language (XML).

* Multi-language (English, French)

* Multi-country (USA, Canada)

* Multi-carrier (Sprint PCS, Bell Canada, Telus, Cantel).

Importantly, the Veev service is an open brand designed to enable global adoption by new partners–merchants or other financial institutions. The pilot revealed encouraging results–40% of participants preferred the mobile channel in spite of access to fixedline equipment, whether at home or in the office. Central to Veev’s service is its positioning as a lifestyle portal, with a gateway to indigo.ca, the Canadian online retailer. Again, pilot results showed that users favoured entry through the bank portal, highlighting the potential for adding new services through the trust relationship that the bank supplies. Service and technological enhancements have been deployed gradually, chiming with Bank of Montreal’s strategy of building visibility as a precursor to service provision.