It feels like there's a growing split between what borrowers and depositors want from banks.
Conventional wisdom says small businesses benefit from a personal relationship with local bankers who know market conditions and can sign off on loans and lines of credit that a national bank might see as too risky or too small to deal with.
But as a depositor, I don't want a personal relationship with my bank at all. I want a reliable IT system with low costs and great tech support if something goes wrong, which is something the scale of a national operation can best deliver.
Things I value in a bank as a consumer. Loans that are serviced by a single entity for the life of the loan. Not ordering transactions in an attempt to drive the balance below zero in a day. Ease of ATM access. Customer service. I have all of these at the CU I use.
I don't keep large liquid in my CU, instead that is in higher yeild accounts, but that was true with Chase or BoA as well.
The reliable IT system has to be there, but you might be horrified about the beast of systems (human and computer) that make our banks/ach/transactions/etc function.
I don't worry much about loosing money in the bank due to FDIC/
NCUSIF. I can't audit their internal process so I instead depend on insurance. It kinda removes worry about their IT infra from my mind.
If you are above FDIC value, you should be banking with multiple banks and putting your money to better uses.
> It kinda removes worry about their IT infra from my mind.
For me, 'good IT infrastructure' isnt for reliability (though that's important!), but got good digital products. I want an iPhone app for my bank that's made my actual humans that know how to make apps.
In my eyes, the most successful banks have realised that there's actually very little differentiation between financial products between banks, and where you can set yourself apart is with your internet banking and mobile apps.
I've always wondered what rich people do when their savings/investments vastly exceed the FDIC/SIPC maximums of 250k per institution, because past a certain point, splitting among multiple banking institutions becomes logistically infeasible.
Do they tend to get some kind of private insurance against institutional failures for their entire balance? Or do they just not worry about it?
There isn't much of a gap between your average credit union and the best online banks. They all use one of a few COTS systems. Usually the only gap is that it is more difficult to setup inter-bank ACH.
I don't trust most national operations to actually have great tech support, though. The few that seem to have reasonably good remote customer service for when things inevitable break are the "online only" banks that exist entirely in that space.
"which is something the scale of a national operation can best deliver" I bet people from the field can chip in more but from what I know the systems at large banks are in horrendous state and are a crazy patchwork of legacy systems modern components and incompatible system from various merged/acquired entities.
As a startup I really like having a relationship with my bankers (pretty much always SVB -- tried a few others, without the love), including just as a depositor.
For my personal bank account though I agree -- just do the job at lowest cost. A cash management account works better for me even than a credit union.
In the context your banking system is in, this attitude makes perfect sense to me. But bigger picture, it is weird.
Note that this is an attitude where the banks are essentially assumed not to be at risk of bankruptcy. Maybe this means the depositor views the banks as a utility - access to the system whereby debts are settled and trade occurs.
This is completely at odds with what the banks actually do day-to-day, which is make judgments about which businesses and families have a chance to thrive. They execute this through their decisions on who to loan to, and how much.
There is an enormous tension here - the capitalist mechanism to encourage good performance of the banks day-to-day duties is losses and hence bankruptcy if they really muck up. A voting consumer who wants 'reliable IT' and 'Tech Support' isn't going to tolerate that in the design of the system.
I don't have any money in the American banking system, so I can be harsh. The world is full of threats and risk; if people can ignore what is been done with their money then the financial abstractions and safety nets are too extreme. It isn't reasonable for a depositor to be completely, purposefully ignorant of what is being done with their money. They should acknowledge and carry some (relatively small amount) of the risk, and have an actual relationship with their banker.
I miss the old-world personal relation with the banking manager that a reasonably wealthy individual could enjoy. I think it would create stronger local communities.
EDIT obviously depositors with account sizes in the <$10,000 sort of range should be able to ignore the whole financial thing, they don't really have enough money to be interesting. But serious amounts of money should feel some of the risk. Someone with, eg, a $50,000 bond should be able to ask probing questions.
An account with a retail bank is nothing more than the plumbing from employer to landlord, credit card issuer, etc. That plumbing may include a small reservoir to smooth short-term differences in flow rate, but most Americans don't even have that. The very best a bank can possibly do for you is to minimize annoyance and abstain from charging fees.
When your short-term/emergency needs are fulfilled and you want a relationship, risk exposure, critical thinking about the use your money is put to, etc. you invest with a broker. Some traditional banks have associated brokerages (Chase/JPM, BofA/Merrill) and some brokerages have minor retail banks (Fidelity, Schwab) but the best-in-class services generally come from different institutions.
For most practical purposes, banking and investment are completely different things. That may not have been true historically, but these days the concept of interest on a deposit account is a vestigial curiosity. If you want returns, you go to the stock market.
The word on the street in the credit union industry is that you need $500 million in assets to be long term viable. It could be lower for a bank, but you'd need a laser focused niche.
[edit] source: I sit on the board of a credit union. This is a concern driven by the regulatory burden and cost to maintain a competitive IT infrastructure
I found them on the "Who's hiring page" here on HN and they seemed very on the ball (speaking as someone with lots of big bank tech operations experience).
The problem is that banking is a business for suckers. Banks only make money because, theoretically, they have low capital costs. But these days there are many, many entities flush with capital and eager to lend and they certainly don't care about actual cash flows or hard assets. In a world with 100B VC funds and SBICs and sovereign funds all desperate for any kind of real growth only suckers actually go to the bank for loans. And actually loaning real money to such people won't move the needle. This makes banking an inherently risky, and very boring commodity business. In the UK everybody's constantly asking why banks won't lend to anybody but real-estate developers and real-estate investors. What else are they supposed to do to pay their rent? Finance another kebab shop?
China, frankly, has done the right thing and fully embraced shadow banking. Having the economy held hostage by a bunch of golfers is insane. Extend the special privileges enjoyed by banks to a wide array of institutions and you will see capital find its way to the best allocators. This isn't about deregulating banks. This is about recognizing there are wide array of lenders out there who are ready to invest. Bring the shadow banks in from the cold.
> and cost to maintain a competitive IT infrastructure
I would actually counter this with the point that many of the historic banks are so steeped in technical debt that newcomers are at massive advantage in terms of iteration speed and IT cost. This comes from a lack of competition (until very recently), and cultural problems at the executive level that stop them from considering themselves technology oriented firms.
Look at Monzo in the UK, recently given full banking license, been on the scene for 3 years now.
No bank in the UK has been able to come close on ease of use/access, onboarding speed, settlement speed, customer service, clarity and feature set of their current account. From the outside, it looks like they aren't even trying...
Has there been any talk of credit unions pooling resources on some of the IT stuff? Everyone expects a mobile app nowadays, but it doesn't make much economic sense for every single credit union to build their own.
There is an active market for vendor software, as indicated by the other replies. The real expense driver isn't necessarily that "you need an app" but that "you need an app that is either very hardened or safely quarantined from your core infrastructure". And more generally, yeah the front-end stuff is kinda crappy, but it's because the back-end has to connect to a bunch of different systems with weird proprietary protocols and it has to work 100%. Every. single. penny.
And if you're a $100-$200 million in assets credit union, you may have an IT team of 2-3 people (that's a swag, but it wouldn't be > 5)
The company I work for develops software, including mobile apps, for smaller banks and credit unions that can't afford their own development team. We have more than a thousand clients and all of their apps are basically built on the same codebase with small branding customisations (colours, images etc). Company is called Fiserv, if anyone is interested.
Two separate Canadian credit unions I use have the exact same app layout, (island savings, vancity) so I imagine that's already happening to some extent.
What if you don’t raise money from ordinary depositors?
I really liked the Beal Bank model when I read about it, they raised from CDs, money market funds, etc which had a low funding cost but not much IT needs. The guy who started it is worth 10B+ now
I think you may have it backwards. CDs and money market funds are actually liabilities for the financial institution. They're ways of paying customers more in the hopes of attracting deposits.
There are non-depository financial institutions, but you'd be more familiar with them by other names: investment banks, insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds
There is a vote every year and I looked at the candidates and thought "wait a minute! these are just normal people like me!" so the next year I ran.
I highly recommend it. Most CU boards are in desperate need of younger members (younger here being <50), you learn a TON about governance vs management vs doing the work, and it looks good on a resume too
I'd guess that being in a niche brings you a better understanding of the environment but the downside is that if that niche tanks, you're toast.
Credit unions (or their closest form) in Europe, (co-op banks and various incarnations such as Sparkasses or Caisses d'Epargne) are now spreading their risks, and to alleviate the geographical niche issue merged together (several dozens Caisses d'Epargne in France 15 years ago, about ten now for instance).
Other forms of pseudo co-op banks such as Credit Agricole (which started as a network of farmers credit unions) or Caja Rural are now banking behemoths doing everything from retail banking to investment, HFT: Credit Agricole is now probably in the top 10 largest banks worldwide.
Perhaps, but serving a specific niche is exactly the origin and general mission of credit unions in the US. Most CUs now try to have as broad a membership as possible but this is a recent trend.
When I mentioned a laser focused niche, I meant that by being niche focused (like Venmo or Paypal) you can avoid a lot of the overhead needed for having a wider selection of banking services. The common example here is no physical locations, no tellers, less overhead. But it also applies that if you don't do mortgage lending you don't need mortgage specialists and you have less interest rate risk to manage
[edit] re: ldayley comment, I'm referring to vertical niches of service rather than horizontal market niches
That's messed up. Injustice, and maybe racist? So many other Banks down the street that casued malice...I thought it was bad enough that non of the big banks got in trouble for ruining the global economy...but to prosecute a small bank, which has default rate of 1/10th of other banks is infuriating, which fired the one employee that casued trouble...
Though they were cleared of all charges, I'e the stress caused onto the staff of 19 people was great.
The only reason they brought the charges on "low hanging fruit" was to be able to point at why it is basically impossible to prove crimes against an individual or corporation in nuanced financial matters to a jury.
The point was to show how this is a negligent use of public resources unless the laws changed, which they won't.
Maybe it backfired because the jury felt it was unfair by that point, the result is still the same and it solidifies the case law itself raising the bar for prosecution even higher.
In fairness to him, the OCC (the national banking regulator in the US) has had a practical moratorium on new national bank licenses for most of the past 10 years. You can get a new state bank charter, but not a national one. I can't blame him for not wanting to start a bank in the US lately.
I was mostly being snarky -- totally agree: starting a bank is insanely complex & difficult, and it's not getting any easier. Kudos for even trying. No blame from here either.
I can't tell if this comment is in jest or not, but we actually are starting a bank in the UK to be a platform bank for fintechs across Europe and beyond. Happy to chat.
I think its interesting to see fintechs trying to bypass the traditional banking model entirely. They are trying to move up the chain with a UX advantage while larger players are trying to defend themselves. Square and Venmo both offer debit cards which covers the majority of banking needs for an average person.
We've actually started a new bank explicitly to provide the banking infrastructure to companies like this that are good at owning the UX advantage. Our conviction is that in the long term banks will be disintermediated from most of their customers and there will be a general unbundling of banking services - you won't get your mortgage / small business loan / checking account all at the same bank.
0. don't tell the customers that we can do anything we can't do
1. cap profits at a low percentage of the capital base to discourage being irresponsible with customer money; enforce corporate austerity to keep costs very low
2. any profits over the cap are returned to customers
that's it, i think. the idea is to have a bank that is rock solid (even when compared to other banks) and profitable for customers. maybe only offer one type of account, and have no minimum deposit. no fees, and offer ATM cost refunds. no personal loans. no credit cards. maybe offer a mortgage package, but probably not. no branches, obviously. customer service would be top priority.
the corporate side of the bank would ride on austerity. no advertising beyond what is necessary to start the bank in motion. no luxuries for the c-suite. maybe enforce a max disparity in pay between the lowest rung and highest rung of employees to something outrageously constrained like 10 or 20k. maybe only have five or six job titles in total, if possible. fill those jobs on a first (somewhat qualified) come first serve basis and a 20 minute interview. advertise the jobs only as necessary.
is this idea crazy? maybe in the banking sector it might be, but you can't trust them. they're drunk on chasing money, and they're reliably unreliable in the long term-- the article even mentions how many banks have gone under.
but there are a lot of great examples of other kinds of companies (i am specifically thinking of the food wholesaler called aldi) which make their money by offering what the customer needs and nothing more. you don't need to go crazy profiteering to make robust profits...
You do realize all those things COST banks money in the past right?
some 30+ years ago, when banks were on COBOL mostly, the system analysts would try to lower costs because you couldn't charge a fee, and if you didn't provide services that cost the bank money, the clients would move to your competition.
In that time, banks had the concept of Client Acquisition Cost. Today banks uses fee for everything and everyone is ok with that, so they now have the concept of Recurring Fee Profit Per Customer. If you don't pay many fees, they treat you like garbage.
So yes, it is very possible to make a profit by not only having those things but having that without fees. You will just have a harder time getting institutional investors because now they will only ever invest in predatory banks because they provide a return much faster.
> maybe enforce a max disparity in pay between the lowest rung and highest rung of employees to something outrageously constrained like 10 or 20k
A simple multiplier makes more sense. Top position shouldn't be making more than 10x the bottom position (or something like that). A janitor, for instance if full-time and more than just sweeping floors, is making $20-40k/year (big spread, but that's starting at $10/hour and going up to $20/hour which is a reasonable rate in much of the country for that work). So that means top brass is making $200k-400k (on a 10x multiplier between top/bottom incomes). If the big boss wants a pay raise, they have to move at least the bottom of the pay range up with them. If you add a constraint on the mean/median income, they have to bring everyone up with them.
i think using that framework the ideal constraint would be something like 1.2X or maybe at the very most 1.5X. this leads to overpaid janitors and underpaid execs, which is the desired result of the policy. it sucks having to find a new janitor because things get dirty in the meantime, but there are a billion execs out there and most of them should be doing very little other than keeping the ship stable most of the time.
holding people's money safely is not an occupation for people who can afford to treat money carelessly in their personal lives.
i know that these are "stupid" and petty things, but i think little petty things like this add up into a corporate culture if you have enough of them. the corporate culture of this hypothetical bank would do a lot to add to its branding and also its credibility.
honestly i wouldn't even be proposing extreme measures like these (or advocating that the execs should be doing very little) if i didn't think it was necessary for the concept, which i've now put far too much effort into :p
Cheaper to either embezzle of buy one of those floor cleaning zambonies, lay off one of the janitors, give the rest a raise and expect them to get done in the same time.
There are other perks an executive could ask for that are harder to track as total compensation.
> that's it, i think. the idea is to have a bank that is rock solid (even when compared to other banks) and profitable for customers. maybe only offer one type of account, and have no minimum deposit. no fees, and offer ATM cost refunds. no personal loans. no credit cards. maybe offer a mortgage package, but probably not. no branches, obviously. customer service would be top priority.
You're basically describing Fidelity to some degree. Their . cash management product basically has all of those features. They do offer a credit card, but word is they lose money on it to capture brokerage business.
The issue is all of that is subsidized by brokerage clients, where the fee structure is still reasonable depending on what you're doing, but still mixes retail and investment banking, which I take as an implied no-no in this thread?
Readit News
Conventional wisdom says small businesses benefit from a personal relationship with local bankers who know market conditions and can sign off on loans and lines of credit that a national bank might see as too risky or too small to deal with.
But as a depositor, I don't want a personal relationship with my bank at all. I want a reliable IT system with low costs and great tech support if something goes wrong, which is something the scale of a national operation can best deliver.
I don't keep large liquid in my CU, instead that is in higher yeild accounts, but that was true with Chase or BoA as well.
The reliable IT system has to be there, but you might be horrified about the beast of systems (human and computer) that make our banks/ach/transactions/etc function.
I don't worry much about loosing money in the bank due to FDIC/ NCUSIF. I can't audit their internal process so I instead depend on insurance. It kinda removes worry about their IT infra from my mind.
If you are above FDIC value, you should be banking with multiple banks and putting your money to better uses.
For me, 'good IT infrastructure' isnt for reliability (though that's important!), but got good digital products. I want an iPhone app for my bank that's made my actual humans that know how to make apps.
In my eyes, the most successful banks have realised that there's actually very little differentiation between financial products between banks, and where you can set yourself apart is with your internet banking and mobile apps.
I use Monzo in the UK and really enjoy it.
Do they tend to get some kind of private insurance against institutional failures for their entire balance? Or do they just not worry about it?
There isn't much of a gap between your average credit union and the best online banks. They all use one of a few COTS systems. Usually the only gap is that it is more difficult to setup inter-bank ACH.
For my personal bank account though I agree -- just do the job at lowest cost. A cash management account works better for me even than a credit union.
Note that this is an attitude where the banks are essentially assumed not to be at risk of bankruptcy. Maybe this means the depositor views the banks as a utility - access to the system whereby debts are settled and trade occurs.
This is completely at odds with what the banks actually do day-to-day, which is make judgments about which businesses and families have a chance to thrive. They execute this through their decisions on who to loan to, and how much.
There is an enormous tension here - the capitalist mechanism to encourage good performance of the banks day-to-day duties is losses and hence bankruptcy if they really muck up. A voting consumer who wants 'reliable IT' and 'Tech Support' isn't going to tolerate that in the design of the system.
I don't have any money in the American banking system, so I can be harsh. The world is full of threats and risk; if people can ignore what is been done with their money then the financial abstractions and safety nets are too extreme. It isn't reasonable for a depositor to be completely, purposefully ignorant of what is being done with their money. They should acknowledge and carry some (relatively small amount) of the risk, and have an actual relationship with their banker.
I miss the old-world personal relation with the banking manager that a reasonably wealthy individual could enjoy. I think it would create stronger local communities.
EDIT obviously depositors with account sizes in the <$10,000 sort of range should be able to ignore the whole financial thing, they don't really have enough money to be interesting. But serious amounts of money should feel some of the risk. Someone with, eg, a $50,000 bond should be able to ask probing questions.
When your short-term/emergency needs are fulfilled and you want a relationship, risk exposure, critical thinking about the use your money is put to, etc. you invest with a broker. Some traditional banks have associated brokerages (Chase/JPM, BofA/Merrill) and some brokerages have minor retail banks (Fidelity, Schwab) but the best-in-class services generally come from different institutions.
For most practical purposes, banking and investment are completely different things. That may not have been true historically, but these days the concept of interest on a deposit account is a vestigial curiosity. If you want returns, you go to the stock market.
[edit] source: I sit on the board of a credit union. This is a concern driven by the regulatory burden and cost to maintain a competitive IT infrastructure
You should check them out: https://www.narmitech.com/
I found them on the "Who's hiring page" here on HN and they seemed very on the ball (speaking as someone with lots of big bank tech operations experience).
The problem is that banking is a business for suckers. Banks only make money because, theoretically, they have low capital costs. But these days there are many, many entities flush with capital and eager to lend and they certainly don't care about actual cash flows or hard assets. In a world with 100B VC funds and SBICs and sovereign funds all desperate for any kind of real growth only suckers actually go to the bank for loans. And actually loaning real money to such people won't move the needle. This makes banking an inherently risky, and very boring commodity business. In the UK everybody's constantly asking why banks won't lend to anybody but real-estate developers and real-estate investors. What else are they supposed to do to pay their rent? Finance another kebab shop?
China, frankly, has done the right thing and fully embraced shadow banking. Having the economy held hostage by a bunch of golfers is insane. Extend the special privileges enjoyed by banks to a wide array of institutions and you will see capital find its way to the best allocators. This isn't about deregulating banks. This is about recognizing there are wide array of lenders out there who are ready to invest. Bring the shadow banks in from the cold.
There are few industries that even approach that.
I would actually counter this with the point that many of the historic banks are so steeped in technical debt that newcomers are at massive advantage in terms of iteration speed and IT cost. This comes from a lack of competition (until very recently), and cultural problems at the executive level that stop them from considering themselves technology oriented firms.
Look at Monzo in the UK, recently given full banking license, been on the scene for 3 years now.
No bank in the UK has been able to come close on ease of use/access, onboarding speed, settlement speed, customer service, clarity and feature set of their current account. From the outside, it looks like they aren't even trying...
And if you're a $100-$200 million in assets credit union, you may have an IT team of 2-3 people (that's a swag, but it wouldn't be > 5)
Deleted Comment
I really liked the Beal Bank model when I read about it, they raised from CDs, money market funds, etc which had a low funding cost but not much IT needs. The guy who started it is worth 10B+ now
There are non-depository financial institutions, but you'd be more familiar with them by other names: investment banks, insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds
I highly recommend it. Most CU boards are in desperate need of younger members (younger here being <50), you learn a TON about governance vs management vs doing the work, and it looks good on a resume too
Credit unions (or their closest form) in Europe, (co-op banks and various incarnations such as Sparkasses or Caisses d'Epargne) are now spreading their risks, and to alleviate the geographical niche issue merged together (several dozens Caisses d'Epargne in France 15 years ago, about ten now for instance).
Other forms of pseudo co-op banks such as Credit Agricole (which started as a network of farmers credit unions) or Caja Rural are now banking behemoths doing everything from retail banking to investment, HFT: Credit Agricole is now probably in the top 10 largest banks worldwide.
[edit] re: ldayley comment, I'm referring to vertical niches of service rather than horizontal market niches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus_Federal_Savings_Bank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus:_Small_Enough_to_Jail (an excellent documentary)
Though they were cleared of all charges, I'e the stress caused onto the staff of 19 people was great.
The point was to show how this is a negligent use of public resources unless the laws changed, which they won't.
Maybe it backfired because the jury felt it was unfair by that point, the result is still the same and it solidifies the case law itself raising the bar for prosecution even higher.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-wagner-60a65b116/
So I guess you...can't open a bank?
My email on my HN profile if you are interested in learning more.
any takers?
https://www.lendacademy.com/ant-financial-is-now-a-top-10-ba...
0. don't tell the customers that we can do anything we can't do
1. cap profits at a low percentage of the capital base to discourage being irresponsible with customer money; enforce corporate austerity to keep costs very low
2. any profits over the cap are returned to customers
that's it, i think. the idea is to have a bank that is rock solid (even when compared to other banks) and profitable for customers. maybe only offer one type of account, and have no minimum deposit. no fees, and offer ATM cost refunds. no personal loans. no credit cards. maybe offer a mortgage package, but probably not. no branches, obviously. customer service would be top priority.
the corporate side of the bank would ride on austerity. no advertising beyond what is necessary to start the bank in motion. no luxuries for the c-suite. maybe enforce a max disparity in pay between the lowest rung and highest rung of employees to something outrageously constrained like 10 or 20k. maybe only have five or six job titles in total, if possible. fill those jobs on a first (somewhat qualified) come first serve basis and a 20 minute interview. advertise the jobs only as necessary.
is this idea crazy? maybe in the banking sector it might be, but you can't trust them. they're drunk on chasing money, and they're reliably unreliable in the long term-- the article even mentions how many banks have gone under.
but there are a lot of great examples of other kinds of companies (i am specifically thinking of the food wholesaler called aldi) which make their money by offering what the customer needs and nothing more. you don't need to go crazy profiteering to make robust profits...
some 30+ years ago, when banks were on COBOL mostly, the system analysts would try to lower costs because you couldn't charge a fee, and if you didn't provide services that cost the bank money, the clients would move to your competition.
In that time, banks had the concept of Client Acquisition Cost. Today banks uses fee for everything and everyone is ok with that, so they now have the concept of Recurring Fee Profit Per Customer. If you don't pay many fees, they treat you like garbage.
So yes, it is very possible to make a profit by not only having those things but having that without fees. You will just have a harder time getting institutional investors because now they will only ever invest in predatory banks because they provide a return much faster.
A simple multiplier makes more sense. Top position shouldn't be making more than 10x the bottom position (or something like that). A janitor, for instance if full-time and more than just sweeping floors, is making $20-40k/year (big spread, but that's starting at $10/hour and going up to $20/hour which is a reasonable rate in much of the country for that work). So that means top brass is making $200k-400k (on a 10x multiplier between top/bottom incomes). If the big boss wants a pay raise, they have to move at least the bottom of the pay range up with them. If you add a constraint on the mean/median income, they have to bring everyone up with them.
i think using that framework the ideal constraint would be something like 1.2X or maybe at the very most 1.5X. this leads to overpaid janitors and underpaid execs, which is the desired result of the policy. it sucks having to find a new janitor because things get dirty in the meantime, but there are a billion execs out there and most of them should be doing very little other than keeping the ship stable most of the time.
holding people's money safely is not an occupation for people who can afford to treat money carelessly in their personal lives.
i know that these are "stupid" and petty things, but i think little petty things like this add up into a corporate culture if you have enough of them. the corporate culture of this hypothetical bank would do a lot to add to its branding and also its credibility.
honestly i wouldn't even be proposing extreme measures like these (or advocating that the execs should be doing very little) if i didn't think it was necessary for the concept, which i've now put far too much effort into :p
There are other perks an executive could ask for that are harder to track as total compensation.
You're basically describing Fidelity to some degree. Their . cash management product basically has all of those features. They do offer a credit card, but word is they lose money on it to capture brokerage business.
The issue is all of that is subsidized by brokerage clients, where the fee structure is still reasonable depending on what you're doing, but still mixes retail and investment banking, which I take as an implied no-no in this thread?