Monday May 10 3:06 PM ET
AOL, Five Banks Sign Online Banking Deal
DULLES, Va. (Reuters) - America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news), the world's No. 1 Internet services company, Monday said it signed multi-year pacts with five
big U.S. banks to carry their online banking activities on AOL's Personal Finance Channel.
Under the agreements, customers of Bank of America Corp., Bank One Corp. (NYSE:ONE - news), Citigroup Inc.'s flagship, Citibank, Union Bank of California
and Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC - news) will be able to carry out online a range of banking activities, from checking and savings account transactions to home
equity loan applications, through AOL's Banking Center. Citigroup and Bank of America Corp. are the No. 1 and No. 2 U.S. bank holding companies, respectively,
in terms of total assets. Union Bank of California was formed after the 1996 merger that created The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd (NYSE:MBK - news).
The AOL pact with Columbus, Ohio-based Bank One represents a new agreement, while those with the other four leading banks are an extension of existing
agreements, AOL said.
''These agreements with some of the leading banks in the industry will help the banks offer their services to AOL's and CompuServe's combined membership of 19
million consumers, and will help AOL continue to give our members the convenience, ease of use and reliability they have come to expect from us,'' Jonathan Sacks,
senior vice president of the AOL service, said in a statement.
An AOL spokesman declined to release terms of these agreements, but noted that the online banking services already are available to customers of these five banks.
These agreements are part of the re-launch of AOL's Banking Center within the company's Personal Finance Channel.
Shares of AOL leaped $10.125 to $128.3125 Monday afternoon in composite New York Stock Exchange trading. The stock had traded as high as $129.0625 a
share earlier.
AOL, in a statement announcing the online banking agreements, cited a recent study by Inteco Research, which predicts that more than 24 million U.S. households
will be banking online by 2003, up from 10.5 million in 1999.
AOL said it has revamped its Banking Center, which now offers loan calculators from FinanceCenter Inc.; loan rate information from bankrate.com; planning tools
and mortgage information from Quicken Mortgage, and online home equity loan applications and services from The Associates, part of Associates First Capital
Corp. (NYSE:AFS - news), the No. 1 U.S. consumer finance company.
About 5.7 million AOL members use the Dulles, Va.-based company's Personal Finance Channel to maintain more than 10.4 million active investment portfolios,
with more than 11,000 new portfolios added every trading day, AOL said.
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