Hi
I'll be first to say welcome to the UK and UKY!
I'll also counter that with the 'overall' UK's general sloth like view to Internet Banking and banking as a whole compared to the US.
I'm sure you've heard of Quicken? I used to work for Intuit here in the UK and covered this software from a technical, a support and development perspective. However my previous career job going back to early 99 and some experience going back to early 98etc - that the UK 'generally' is just not interested in Personal Finance tracking. Over the years, I'd be shocked at when I'd compare Financial things like this from Personal level, to small business to the largest corporates that I'd cover and deal with.
I remember some of our USA colleagues coming over to the UK office in mid 2000,and literlly laughing at the kick off meetings - "you guys use 56K dialup to connect to client systems?" - bear in mind these were the top 5 accounting firms and top 20 legal firms in the UK! ...
When I got more involved with personal finance and Quicken, the gulf between what the North American mindset is compared to here was literally shocking to me.
I opened an account with an online bank that had much fanfare in the 'internet' age as being an 'Online Bank' .. they were called 'Egg'. I hardly used the account as for an internet bank, they didn't have the option to download your statement !! My jaw hit the floor on that one! that's like KFC saying 'We don't offer Chicken' !!
I'm a HSBC customer, and from your description, it sounds like the online banking experience I have with them, however it's 'pretty much' the same with all the big UK banks unfortunatley. for each point;
1. I agree with the long username ID, I've memorised mine now
2. financial software integration - limited, excel spreadsheets and some banks offer OFX file outputs.
3. Auto login - no chance! took years for the UK population to even get online! security? whats that then I'd VERY often hear clients and individuals say!!
4. Mobile Apps - some banks are developing those and implementing them, early days yet though
5. CC transactions - yes, annoying with HSBC, goes to PDF format, however, as I've worked in corporate level data centres and 'how they work' I can see why this is the case, it's complex, but in short it's extremely expensive to to keep certain data in particular formats for retrieval purposes. There's much more to this though....
6. HSBC do the same output formats for CC and current accounts, not sure what you mean here
7. As above, there's no demand from the UK population to 'look after their finances' budgets, saving goals, paying off credit card balances, not running up debts - all fly over the majority of UK population heads!! the banks won't put something up on their website that will have limited users....
8. The Rapport software I think is actually a good thing. I say that becuase of the shocking number of people out there who don't have security software - and believe me, any percentage you are thinking of, multiply it by a certain factor!!! - perhaps speak to your IT management team and see if they'll let their firewall allow online banking? long shot though....
There are some online banking tests and reviews that were done by PC Pro magazine recently, not sure if they have that article online at the moment though..
Overall, no, you won't find the 'usual' feature sets you'll find in USA banks here in the UK - there's just no demand for them. Quicken was withdrawn from the UK market in terms of developing new versions - why develop for a smaller and dwindling user base?(part of the reason I was put out of a job!!) microsoft pulled their 'Money' software as well a few years later. The two biggest and most widely known and used personal finance packages out of the UK.
Prior to the current recession, and during it etc, you'd have thought the UK's population would actually 'want' to keep a track of their finances better.. . no such luck there! some active and vocal user groups for this sort of thing mentioned this, but it's head against a brick wall I'm afraid!
there's some smaller personal finance software specialists, but none have really taken off, even after the Giant's above left the UK market...
I personally run my last release to the UK market version of Quicken, under a Windows XP install and do my financial tracking there. some features dont work anymore, but overall it's still doing 97% of what I need it for.
I could go on about more and other aspects.. but I won't !
Cheers, DtM! West London & Slough UK!
