Realizing that many of its wealthy clients lack the time or patience to deal with their personal finances, Amsterdam-based private bank Insinger de Beaufort launched a new service that takes finances back to the basics: a shoebox.

After sitting down with their private banker to discuss financial planning, Insinger's clients are sent a big shoebox by courier every month. They drop anything admin-related into the box: bills to be paid, bank statements, receipts, tax returns, speeding tickets, insurance documents, etc. At the end of the month, Insinger sends a courier to pick up the box, and then processes its contents. Clients are sent a complete overview of actions and transactions within three business days, after which the bank takes care of the entire follow-up process, including paying bills, filing tax returns and processing business expenses.

Every quarter, clients are sent a financial report, detailing spending categories, asset growth, etc, and once a year, they meet with their private banker to evaluate new developments and adjust their financial planning as needed. Sensing a gap in the market, Insinger de Beaufort offers its shoebox service to clients at other banks, too. The concept is of course entirely focused on convenience, saving (valuable) clients the time and hassle of dealing with the minutiae of their personal finances. While other banks provide their high-end clients with similar add-on services, the shoebox approach is undeniably elegant in its no-tech simplicity.

Website: www.insinger.com/shoebox
Contact: shoebox@insinger.com

Spotted by: Roderick Cremers

This past spring we wrote about ECHOage, a Canadian venture dedicated to doing away with wasteful kids' birthday parties and focusing them instead on giving one gift and supporting one cause. Now DreamBank—also out of Canada—is bringing a similar concept to the grown-up world.

DreamBank aims to help people 18 and over fund their dreams by posting them online and inviting friends and family to contribute toward their realization. Posting a dream is free, and dreams must simply be valued anywhere between CDN 20 and CDN 20,000—examples currently on the site range from paying off student loans to attending the 2010 Olympics. Donating toward a dream is an eco-friendly alternative to traditional gifts, the site says, noting the many unwanted items that typically get exchanged each year, or are never used. It also helps a charitable cause. When they post a dream, users of the site are asked to choose a charity they'd like to support, with options including CARE, Doctors without Borders, the African Wildlife Foundation and Kiva. DreamBank deducts CDN 2.25 in fees from loved ones' contributions, and until the dream is realized, the rest gets pooled into one big fund, the interest on which is donated to the charity the user selected.

Users of the site can connect and exchange ideas with other "dreamers," and they can also withdraw their donated cash at any time, closing out their dream. DreamBank, meanwhile, deducts 2.5 percent of their total funds when they cash it out. Launched earlier this month, DreamBank already has more than 30 dreams posted on the site. Financial partners working behind the scenes are PayPal and HSBC.

Is this the gift-giving model for a new breed of consumers? With its focus on one big experience over many small possessions (most of the listed dreams are for experiences), DreamBank should definitely strike a chord with transumers.

Website: www.dreambank.org
Contact: feedback@dreambank.org

Spotted by: Lindsay McDonald

For senior citizens, finding travel and other insurance can be a challenge, given the upper age limits most providers put on their services. UK-based Intune hopes to end all that with a range of financial services aimed directly at consumers over 60.

Intune was launched last year by Help the Aged, a charity that works on behalf of older people worldwide, and all profits from its work go back to the charity, which has itself been providing financial services for more than 10 years. Age is not an issue in Intune's products, which include travel, motor, home and pet insurance as well as equity release, saver accounts, care fees advice, identity theft protection and funeral plans, among other services. Intune's travel insurance policy, for example, has no upper age limit, and it boasts that its oldest customer is 101 years old this year. The oldest participant in its winter sports coverage plan is 81.

“We have found that older people holiday more widely than younger age groups, and for longer at a time—more than 121,000 trips of 3–6 months have been taken by this age group over the last year," explains Stuart Castledine, Intune's managing director. "The over-80s traveller has particular requirements which need accommodating, but they do not want a system which writes them off at a time when they should be enjoying life to the full.” Intune's main commercial partner for general insurance products is Liverpool Victoria.

We've now covered supermarkets, health stores, driving services, being spaces and financial services aimed directly at senior citizens. Given the size of this mammoth demographic, none of it comes a moment too soon! It's still a wide open playing field for those who cater to seniors in a respectful and value-providing way. Who will bring services like these to booming consumers in the rest of the world...?

Website: www.intunegroup.co.uk
Contact: www.intunegroup.co.uk/companyInformation/ContactUsForm.aspx

Spotted by: Simon Kirby

Today's high gas prices are already forcing changes in the way many consumers live, but it's a pretty safe bet they won't look so bad in a year or two. A new service from MyGallons.com lets consumers prepurchase gas and lock in today's gas prices for the future.

Consumers who sign up for a MyGallons Card begin by paying an annual membership fee of USD 29.95. Up to three cards can be linked to one account, and the membership fee is backed by a 100 percent money-back guarantee if the consumer doesn't save money on at least one redemption during the year. Members can then monitor their current MyGallons price—a fluctuating quote that's good for purchase of unleaded gas at a particular point in time, including estimated local taxes—and prepurchase gas when they deem the price worth locking in. Purchasing gas is simply a matter of visiting a participating gas station, where the MyGallons Card is accepted much like a debit card, complete with four-digit PIN. The number of gallons pumped is deducted from the consumer's MyGallons account balance, with adjustments automatically made for more expensive grades or types of fuel and price differences caused by tax discrepancies or other local variations. If the consumer pumps fuel from a filling station for less than the lower end of the MyGallons range on that day, he or she will receive a credit, in gallons, to his or her account.

More than 80 percent of the prepurchase money consumers spend through MyGallons is placed in an escrow account and invested in money markets and US government-backed notes; the remainder is used for financial transactions to accommodate gasoline price changes, MyGallons says. There are no time limits on using the prepurchased gas, so consumers can save it for as long as they want, provided they maintain their MyGallons membership.

After a pilot program beginning in April, MyGallons.com just recently underwent a public launch. Due to an unexpected, last-minute pull-out by US Bank, it is in the process of negotiating with other payment networks to allow the MyGallons Card to be accepted at most stations in the US that already accept credit cards. Nevertheless, the service promises to be a taste of what's to come.

Website: www.mygallons.com
Contact: www.mygallons.com/contact_us.html

Spotted by: Ozgur Alaz

Although individuals own more than 25 percent of US equity, only about 20 percent of such investors bother to participate in proxy voting. Why would so many give up their voting rights? A big part of the reason is the difficulty of researching the issues, says ProxyDemocracy founder Andrew Eggers, who is also a doctoral student in Harvard University's Department of Government.

ProxyDemocracy is a non-profit, non-partisan project that aims to change all that by helping individual investors get the information they need to produce positive changes in the companies they own. Owners of stocks in an individual company, for example, can sign up for ProxyDemocracy's email alerts providing advance notice of the company's shareholder meetings as well as information on how respected institutional investors at CalPERS (a state pension fund), Calvert, CBIS (an investment adviser to Catholic institutions) and Domini plan to vote at the meeting. "Just as citizen voters take account of endorsements from respected groups like the Sierra Club or the NRA (depending on one’s political persuasion), individual investors can use these cues from known institutional investors to arrive at a principled vote more cheaply," Eggers explains.

Meanwhile, the free site also offers voting profiles on 77 mutual funds from 33 leading fund families, as well as CalPERS and CBIS. Mutual fund investors can search a database of agendas and institutional investor votes for more than 12,000 shareholder meetings since July 1, 2003, and quickly see how their funds rank on the site's activism scale for director elections, executive compensation, corporate governance and corporate impact. If they don't like a particular fund's voting record, they can contact the company and let them know, or even move their money to a different one.

For some time now transparency tyranny has been causing ulcers among leaders in the travel, hospitality and automotive industries—to name just a few—and now ProxyDemocracy promises to spread the joy of accountability to a wider range of companies than ever. Once again, the Web leaves nowhere to hide!

Website: www.proxydemocracy.org
Contact: info@proxydemocracy.org

Spotted by: Abigail Howell