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Online communities can help consumers in choosing financial products

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authentic   communities   community   compare   comparing   consumers   financial   financials   online   peers   products   quality   transparant   trust

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The crisis has opened the eyes of many consumer about the Financial sector. Trust is the keyissue that is missing in this sector. But people still have to buy, invest and insure anyway. How can they be confincedwhichfinancial product is any good.

Online communities can provide trust to their members about financial products (if they are any good). Members will tell and write about their expericences with financial products to the community.

But theonline community can do more. The comparing sites of financial products are mainly about prices. But the online community has an advantage, it can also compare in service, quality and usebility. The members of the online community have toprovidethis information. This makes it authentic and honest. Hereby the consumers get more trust in teh product and the information they need from peers.

A positive effect is that the financial sector is stimulated to produce more products that have normal quality standards. And have to be more and more transparant.

So the ball is in the corner of the online communities to provide more service to their members. The first Financial Comparing Community will be soon on the Internet, I think. Also interesting to see will be is Financials will use the marketing power of big online communities and how they bend it to their advantage.

Big question is: What will Financials do about this developmentand what place in the value chain the online community is going to take? And second to that how can a online community build around a Financial gigant and be also authentic?