Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal
12-15-2000
The great Web chase
Big banks targeting high rollers online
   A pending merger with Chase Manhattan is not slowing the momentum of J.P. Morgan’s Web site, where affluent investors manage their money.

J.P. Morgan, the first to deliver a sophisticated wealth management site for newly minted millionaires, by year-end will roll out its third upgrade since the site’s spring launch, providing more in-depth analysis and advice tailored specifically to individual clients based on the assets they hold.

Morgan Online 3.0 (www.morganoline.com), which offers customized financial planning services for customers with $1 million or more in assets, will boost account aggregation functions that let investors track and analyze data from a variety of banks and brokerages. No other bank has delivered such a system, although Goldman Sachs is hot on Morgan’s heels.

One major difference: Goldman Sachs will target even higher rollers. “Sachs’ cutoff is at $25 million,” said Larry Tabb, an analyst with the Tower Group, which specializes in financial services sector research. Tabb noted that 8.5 million U.S. households have assets of $1 million or more. Other possible players in this arena such as Citibank, Chase and Merrill Lynch, have focused more on delivering brokerage content than wealth management services on their sites, Tabb noted, adding, “Chase doesn’t have anything [on the Web] to compare with Morgan Online.”

What Chase does have is Chase.com, a business unit created in June 1999 by CEO William Harrison. Chase.com drives the bank’s Internet efforts through strategic alliances, incubation projects and Web-enabling the bank’s core businesses, said Frederick Loder, director of Chase.com’s Internet Management Group. It runs business-to-consumer sites including ChaseOnline, which lets individuals and small businesses view account information and perform transactions online; Chase Companion, an e-wallet service for online shopping; and ChaseShop.com, which offers links to over 25,000 retail stores. On the business-to-business side, is bPurchase.com, an Internet procurement services that offers discount pricing to small to mid-size businesses.