New ABA/Datatrac website will provide competitive rate information for bankers.

Banks will soon be able to obtain competitive deposit and lending interest-rate information more easily. That's because visitors to the ABA website will have real-time access to Datatrac's database of deposit and lending interest rates and specials for over 14,000 financial institutions nationwide, ABA and Datatrac announced recently.

Under the agreement, Datatrac will build and host a website for the ABA called RateDexa Professional, which incorporates interactive technology to allow users to define their own local market and graphically benchmark current and historical rates for their institution against peers, market averages and other financial indices such as prime rate, fed funds rates, etc.

Data can also be downloaded into Excel spreadsheets for additional analysis. The new site is expected to be released on the ABA Web site before year-end.

"We are very excited about our new relationship with Datatrac," says Dr. Jane Yao, managing director of surveys and statistics at ABA. "This service will help bankers stay competitive by enabling them to dynamically graph and compare their rates over the Web against their local and national competitors."

Datatrac's research services can be customized to monitor any mix of asset/liability products and competitors.

Reports can be delivered weekly, biweekly or monthly by fax, e-mail or via a customized, security-coded Internet Research Center. Datatrac also supplies RateAlerts, daily e-mail updates of any rate changes or special offers by competitors. "Many financial institutions do not recognize the true costs associated with collecting their own rate intelligence," said Ken Wanek, president of Datatrac. "Having someone call around, check competitive websites and scan newspaper ads takes time and does not deliver consistent, meeting-ready results. Our solution gives financial institutions the data and tools they need to make timely, informed pricing and marketing decisions."