Why do personal finance on the net? Because there is no other resource quite like it for speed of comparison of alternate insurance, investment, home buying, loan, tax, and planning ideas. Without access to the web, it would take weeks, perhaps months of library work and correspondence to learn what a few minutes of mousework can produce.
Authors Carroll, a chartered accountant, and Broadhead, an MBA grad who advises firms about the net, previously published the bestselling Canadian Internet Handbook.
In their new book, the authors move the reader through topics like insurance terminology with hardly a chance for a yawn. They show sample screens, sparing the bother of having to visit each web site to find out what’s there. Along the way there is a short history of Canadian online banking, a history of insurance from ancient China to Charles II to Ben Franklin, numerous statistical profiles of Canadians, and a good deal of thoughtful comment on how the net will change the world of finance.
Geographic location is irrelevant to net business, note the authors. Therefore small financial institutions with good deals and a presence on the web should be able to compete on an almost level field with major chartered banks. Bank branches, unable to compete with non-stop financial services on the net, will close. The distributional consequences of all this – what happens to folks who can’t even figure out how to program their VCRs, those who can’t afford PCs, and to the price structure of banking services – is an open question. Once the net becomes less a novelty than an institution, the world of finance will indeed be a different place.
For business school students, for home-owners or those to be, indeed for anyone with a PC, Canadian Money Management Online is a fundamental reference. Carroll and Broadhead have crafted another bestseller.
★Canadian Money Management Online: Personal Finance on the Net