Doing Swaps on The Web.

Not so very long ago, individual banks and other financial services providers could rely on relationships with corporate finance customers -- some cultivated over many years -- as a steady source of business. Sure, there was competition, but big providers could count on considerable loyalty from major customers.

Enter the Internet, with its ability to create portals that allow customers to comparison-shop at a single site, putting notions of staunch loyalty to the test. That model has been taken to the corporate finance field by CFOWeb.com, a venture created by Mountain View, Calif.-based Integral Development Corp. CFOWeb, which went live in late June, allows CFOs and treasurers to shop for multiple products from multiple providers, among them some of the world's largest banks and investment banks. It's highly interactive: If you don't like a quote, you can click on a "chat" button and ask the company if they'll make a better offer.

CFOWeb is in the vanguard of a wave of "commingled sites" or "community portals" that answer corporate executives' prayers for more information and more transaction capability on fewer sites. Using the "reverse auction" technique popularized by priceline.com and travelocity.com, customers can ask suppliers to "bid" on their funding requests -- a swap or a foreign exchange spot forward, for instance. Customers simply enter the parameters -- amount, maturity, etc. -- and check off each of the providers they want a bid from. The site also has customizable features such as news feeds, market research and analysis, including a rendering of the value at risk in the portfolio.

CFOWeb, which claimed more than 4,000 corporate customers by mid-summer, had by early July signed up nine major international financial services firms as providers: ABN Amro, AIG International, BNP Paribas, Bank of America, Standard Chartered Bank, ING Barings, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, Credit Agricole Indosuez and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. Three of these companies are also investors in Integral. Providers pay subscription fees and transaction processing fees, while "members" -- CFOs and the like who are seeking funding -- pay nothing.

Integral CEO Harpal Sandhu contends that the new portal pays dividends for both sides -- providing suppliers with an immediate e-commerce platform and access to a large customer set, while giving customers a single source of funding, quick turnaround and competitive pricing. He calls it "a Web-delivered version of classic enterprise software."

Sandhu disagreed with the idea that the model would kill existing relationships. Instead, he said, the transparency may reassure customers that their suppliers are competitive, adding that the rivalry spurred by the site would cause suppliers to beef up their post-trade service or advice offerings to retain customers. An AIG International executive, for instance, said the company, which structures derivatives in foreign exchange and commodity instruments, is offering pre-trade, trade and post-trade services on CFOWeb -- including analytics.

But banks are still adapting their old systems to the Internet on a proprietary basis as on the same day that CFOWeb announced its live launch, Wachovia Corp., the big North Carolina bank, announced an Internet connection to its Wachovia Connection Plus service. "This is an enhancement that a number of current and potential customers have requested," the bank said in announcing the service, which enables corporate treasurers to create domestic and international payments, and do account reconciliation and other cash management functions.