Lei’s official Weblog

I have for a very long time wanted to register online banking. In fact, I did try to do it about three years ago, I cannot remember now why I didn’t complete the whole registration prosess at the time. It was then my pure laziness that I’d never bothered to register again over the subsequent years. Last week I finally received a letter containing my ID number for online banking from Lloyds TSB (a major banking corporation in the UK), so I logged on to my bank account online for the first time. I find the online service provided by the bank very easy to use. Lots of the basic personal banking services like searching account statements, changing personal info and transfers & payments can all be easily done online. Especially, with the online transfers and payments service I will potentially soon be able to view all my bills online and pay them all in one place (the bank is still working on this one at the moment), this would be an incredible convinience for a lazy person like me. Of couse, the bank always welcomes you to apply all of its other banking services (like loans, insurance, pensions, morgages) through your personal online banking account, all of them have been made easier to do online than ever.

It is true that big banks have saved and will save tons of money by moving their services online (or in other words by laying off more employees and closing down more branches), but they are also saving us (ordinary folks) lots of time and money, this is especially so if you are a motivated self-employed or a small business owner. In fact, over the past few years, the big banks have made huge investment in improving their technology and business processes. Most people probably don’t care because they don’t really understand how to use this to their advantage. Apart from the efficiency of carrying out standard business transactions online between you, your customers and your suppliers, there are many other benefits. One most significant is that it has made it much easier for you to manage your books. If you are running a  business and carrying out most of your transactions online, with a good bank you should be able to easily download your trading and bill payment transactions to a financial software package. The software will calculate everything for you and show you your revenue, expense and current balance, and will also automatically produce all necessary financial statements like cash flow, income statements, and balance sheet. Instead of spending extra time managing your books, this will now save you lots of time, and money in case you are hiring someone to do it for you. It will also come incredibly handy when you have to prepare your end of year tax assessment. All you have to do would be emailing the transactions and statements to your accountant to review and certify your books and help you file you taxes. Technology always delivers great efficiency, and in this case the banks also provide them for free!