BforBank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Crédit Agricole, has launched a full online private banking service available to the French mass affluent market using Temenos’s Temenos 24 software.

The new online private bank offers life insurance, mutual funds and e-brokerage and aims to help customers become their own private bankers by providing “the quality of information and range of tools open to a financial advisor”, according to the firm.

“We aim to meet the demands and expectations of an increasingly exacting, financially literate and technology savvy consumer population through a content rich, interactive user experience,” said Vincent Chatard, chief operating officer at BforBank.

One trend often recognised as having been accelerated by the financial crisis is the desire by retail clients to have more control over their investments, possibly prompted by dissatisfaction with the performance of their investments at the time. This is aided by products and services which empower individual investors such as online brokerages, exchange traded funds and the availability of research through the internet.

Other firms have launched services to capitalise on this trend and towards the end of last year the internet based financial services company Swissquote announced plans to develop a full online wealth management service.

“It’s basically the next step of online banking. It started years ago with online payment, then online brokerage (execution of stock transactions) and finally the online industry is attacking the business of online wealth management,” Marc Bürki, Swissquote’s chief executive and co-founder, told WealthBriefing in an interview at the time.