Banks are struggling to figure out how to get in the social computing game and where to start.  Well we here at Microsoft put our heads together and came up with a couple of initial ideas to help banks get started.

So, there are some obvious privacy issues and concerns as it relates to “social networking” in how you do that in an anonymous fashion and get any real value out in the banking space.  Your personal financial position is extremely guarded by you and your bank for numerous reasons…embarrassment on how little you have or keeping the sharks away when you have a lot.  So, some social computing features that would allow you to compare your standing against an aggregate of other people in your banking segment could be really interesting.

So we built into our Silverlight 2.0 Banking/Retail Brokerage (http://www.bankingwithxaml.com/woodgrovefinancial/woodgrovebank.html) demonstration some initial approaches.  These include visualizations on how you compare to your peers in these areas:

·         Bill Pay – how does your monthly gas bill compare?  Are you paying too much?

·         Retirement – 401k-IRA how do you compare in withholdings with people your age?

·         College Savings – 529k how does your investment mix compare with your peers with a child the same age?

If you need assistance in going through the demo or want to install it locally you can get those details here: http://www.bankingwithxaml.com/woodgrovefinancial/

Check it out…