InformationWeek

May 3, 1999

One Billion Served?

By Bob Violino with Mary Thyfault with Rick Whiting

n Woody Allen's futuristic comedy, Sleeper, a man cryogenically frozen is awakened 200 years in the future. When he stops to buy a hamburger at a futuristic McDonald's, the sign out front displays a number with 54 zeroes and after it the word "served."

Citigroup's aim to acquire 1 billion customers isn't quite as outlandish. But almost. "It's an audacious goal," says Bill Doyle, online financial analyst at Forrester Research. "Will they reach it? No. But it's effective as a rallying cry."

"It's a statement about innovation in management and technology at the bank," says Christopher Musto, a senior analyst at Gomez Advisors. "The risk is overreach--that they feel they need to go after that number but haven't developed the capability to do it."

What other companies could go after such a large number of customers? Not many, at least not in the banking and financial-services industry. Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank in terms of assets, provides financial products and services to 30 million households in the United States. Worldwide, there are a handful of regional banks that tap an international retail base, such as Deutsche Bank AG, with 7 million customers in 57 countries. "There are very few banks in the retail business globally, because regulations in many countries prohibit or limit companies in setting up branches," says Bob Landry, a retail-banking analyst at the Tower Group.

Other industries also fall short. AT&T, the largest telecom company, has 70 million residential and 10 million business customers. State Farm Insurance Co., the nation's largest insurer of homes and automobiles, says there are about 65.6 million State Farm policies in force.

If nothing else, a billion customers would demand a lot of disk space. First Union Corp.'s 15 million retail customers and 1 million commercial and small-business customers represent about 7 terabytes of raw data; in its production form, the database approaches 30 terabytes. Return to main story, "Banking On E-Business."