PNC Bank Launches Online Investment Platform for Mass-Affluent

PNC Bank has taken another leap forward in the race to become a leading “omnichannel” provider of banking and investment services.

PNC Investments, the retail brokerage arm of the Pittsburgh-based bank, this week rolled out an online platform that allows brokerage customers to view their banking and investment accounts in one place. The new platform – called PNC Total Insight – is a sister platform to PNC’s Wealth Insight platform, which the bank rolled out to high-net-worth clients in 2011 to wide acclaim, according to industry observers. 

The new platform provides brokerage customers with a suite of online and mobile financial management tools that allows them to monitor asset allocation, track rates of return, review portfolio performance, and aggregate all of their accounts, including 401(k)s and accounts held with outside institutions. It is available to customers with at least $50,000 in a non-qualified investment account, the bank said in its announcement.

“The combined view of investing and banking enables clients to move credit card cash rewards from the PNC Bank accounts into a brokerage account and make easy online and mobile transfers,” Rich Guerrini, president and CEO of PNC Investments, said in a statement.

The new platform augments the in-person advice that customers receive from the brokerage unit’s advisors and is “an extension,” the company said, of Wealth Insight, which earned the bank recognition, according to Sophie Schmitt, a senior analyst with consulting firm Aite Group.  “I think they were one of the first to come out with a solution for the high-net-worth,” Schmitt said.

The bank’s move to bring the online platform to mass-affluent customers “makes sense,” Schmitt added, as it allows PNC to leverage the large investment it made in building the Wealth Insight tool.

“PNC is one of the banks, along with SunTrust, that is leading in this area of delivering service across channels in the way clients want,” Schmitt said.

Clients today want banking and investment services delivered at branches, over the phone and online, an “omnichannel solution” that “feeds the desire in a lot of consumers today for control,” Schmitt explained.

Banks are tripping over themselves to deliver.  SunTrust recently rolled out an online banking and investment aggregation capability called SunTrust SummitView for customers with more than $250,000 in investable assets and Fifth Third is expected to come with something in the near future.

“They all want access to an expert but here,” Schmitt said referring to PNC Bank’s new platform, “they’ve been able to gain that level of control that people seem to crave, especially post-crisis where everyone is a little bit more cautious, a little bit more wanting to take charge of their own situation, as opposed to relying on some investment firm that might go bust down the road.”

Read more: SunTrust Introduces New Online Planning Tool for Mass-Affluent

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