European Online Banking Lagging 10/3/01 More than four million Britons visited a banking or investment website from home in January 2001, according to new data just released by NetValue. The percentage for the German population is almost identical, with an estimated 5.4 million Germans visiting a financial website during the survey month. Amongst the other countries worldwide that NetValue currently measures, Korea is the world leader for Internet banking, with half of all home Internet users either visiting a banking or investment website in January. Korea has seen a huge surge in visitors to finance sites, more than doubling from 2,438,000 visitors in October 2000 to 5,200,000 visitors in January 2001. In terms of time spent on a financial site, the survey shows that French users spend the longest online, doing so for an average of two hours during the month. German users remained on a finance site for 86 minutes, with users in Hong Kong staying for 72 minutes. The UK ranks only ninth in the duration ranking, with users spending just 35 minutes on a financial site. Surprisingly, US users only spent 31.9 minutes. This could indicate that US users are wiser about the data they are looking to get from a website. Looking at the online use by gender, the data reveals that Spain has the highest percentage of male users. It also has the highest percentage of users aged 24 and under visiting finance sites. The male to female ratio is most equal in the US, which also has the largest percentage of over 35 year old users. NetValue conducts its home Internet activity research through recruited panels and NetMeter tracking technology. The panels are recruited by Taylor Nelson Sofres and gather Internet, demographic and socio-economic data. TNS also carries out 32,000 telephone interviews over a year period to clarify the user population’s characteristics.