Javelin’s 2009 Banking Identity Safety Scorecard ranks banks and credit unions on their customer-facing identity fraud Prevention, Detection and Resolution™ capabilities. Leveraging the nation’s most comprehensive study on identity fraud, Javelin updates the Prevention, Detection and Resolution™ criteria each year to show specific ways that individual financial institutions (FIs) can increase customer safety and loyalty through enacting comprehensive security measures and by partnering with account holders to fight identity fraud. Javelin uses a combination of mystery-shopper calls (averaging 6.2 per institution) and extensive website research to score the leading 25 U.S. FIs by gross annual deposit volume against relevant Prevention, Detection, and Resolution™ criteria; collectively this study represents approximately 50% of the U.S. market in 2009 by dollar value of deposits, according to the FDIC. Financial institutions made significant strides in prevention, jumping 27 percentage points from last year, and also slightly improved in detection and resolution capabilities. With six new banks entering the top ten in overall rankings this year and seven new banks leading the pack in prevention, smaller banks have raised the bar in prevention, the most weighted safety area of the identity safety scorecard. More Information

Four forces should be fueling increased adoption of financial alerts: Money is tight for Americans; identify fraud is on the rise; consumers crave more control over their finances and value alerts; and regulators soon could make alerts a banking requirement. Yet the number of households receiving e-mail and/or SMS text alerts remained flat in 2009, ending four consecutive years of double-digit growth in adoption. The lingering recession and slowed investment obviously are factors, but the real problem is the limited supply and inadequate quality of alert offerings at the financial institution and issuer level. This Javelin report explores national survey data that indicates that consumers are growing dissatisfied with alerts that fail to deliver real-time information, are too generic and are too difficult to tailor on the fly. The report also forecasts adoption for alerts, profiles why regular recipients of alerts make prized customers, what alerts consumers value most, and advises financial institutions how they can profit from alerts by sharing control with their customers. This report is part one of a two-part series; the next report will focus on innovative solutions in the marketplace. More Information

If a consumer gets a data breach notification letter, they are four times more likely to suffer identity fraud within the next year. Data breach notifications were intended to help consumers take protective action when their private data is exposed. But there seems to be a disconnect between data breach notifications and consumer understanding of possible outcomes of data breaches. New data shows that consumers who have received data breach notifications within the past year are at a much greater risk for fraud than the typical consumer. Yet, these same consumers rarely attribute the fraud to their data breach exposure. This report also contains an update of data breaches for 2009, implications of changes to the legislative landscape, and the technical means by which data breaches occur. Finally, a timeline of several of the recent, most egregious data breaches in U.S. history (including who, how, where and when) is included. More Information

Javelin’s 2009 Mobile Banking Scorecard ranks the consumer mobile-banking offerings offered by 18 of the nation’s 40 largest banks, based on deposits. The benchmark covered three areas of mobile banking: Features, Access and Marketing. Secret-shoppers harvested information about each bank’s features by searching their websites and phoning customer service representatives multiple times. Of the top 40 institutions analyzed from July through September 2009, 18 offered mobile banking to their customers. All told, Javelin reviewed 26 criteria, including 18 features, six points of access and two marketing issues. The 18 banks offering mobile banking were ranked and awarded gold, silver or bronze status. This report also includes a profile of USAA Bank. More Information