Green to Amber

Tier 2 Australian banks have taken a pounding during the global financial crisis, unable to compete on brand or pricing with the big banks, but all is not lost with some positive news appearing.

Queensland-based Suncorp has been bestowed as the Best Online Bank at the inaugural AMBER awards, held in Sydney last week.

The awards are designed to provide a new independent yardstick for transaction-based web and mobile services in Australia.

Bank of Queensland chipped in by winning the Best Mobile Commerce category, with Macquarie Bank winning the Best Online Trading Platform, pipping CommSec and E*TRADE.

The awards covered areas outside of financial services, with Youi winning the Best Online Insurance provider, beating big names such as AAMI Australia, Allianz Insurance Online, GIO Insurance and NRMA Insurance Online.

Vet Shop Australia triumphed in the Best Online Retail category, beating eBay Australia, GraysOnline, City Software and Ticketek Australia.

Fairfax Digital’s Stayz was voted Best Online Travel winner, beating Expedia, Virgin Blue, Webjet and Wotif.

The AMBER Awards process has reviewed all the major service providers in each of the different industry categories.

Entries were judged from a field of over 120 including the Top 20 leading players, or those with over 5% of the market share of each category leader being automatically included in the field of assessment.

There was also a process for open nominations for innovators in each field.

The AMBER Awards encompass Australian based services such as each of the major retail bank’s online offerings. They do not include global services that also attract large Australian audiences such as Amazon.com.

CoreData conducted the research behind the awards.