Burlington-based NeoSaej Corp. launched MoneyAisle.com in June of 2008 to much media fanfare; it was a Web site that promised to help banks bring in deposits easily. Prospective customers looking for a bank enter their deposit amount, the Web site finds the best rate for them – boom, that bank gets a new customer.

Up until last year, deposits were relatively scarce for banks – people preferred the higher returns of the stock market. All that changed in September 2008. Banks ended up flush with deposits, and MoneyAisle lost a selling point. But after stumbling during the economic turmoil of the past year, CEO Mukesh Chatter says the site is back on track.

Mukesh Chatter
Title: CEO and President
Company: NeoSaej Corp., which operates MoneyAisle.com
Age: 50

How has the past year affected MoneyAisle?

When we launched the product, “deposit crunch” was still a huge challenge to a lot of banks around the country that did not have enough money in deposits. … So when we launched, we got great reception, we had about 100 banks in our network; we have about 135 banks today. And it was a good rush, we had a decent amount of deposits right out of the gate … Then the markets started to go down, and then everything was in a state of flux and banks were having real problems in the November-December timeframe, and traffic really dropped because everybody was worried about things going under and didn’t know who to trust … That became a challenge.

Have you had any banks leave the network?

There were, I think, four or five of them. But mainly because they were acquired by the FDIC.

Where do the bulk of your banks come from?

All over the country. We have about 30 states at this point … Massachusetts is probably our largest concentration [with about 12 or 13 banks], but Michigan is big, New York, Tennessee.

When did things start to pick up again, in terms of traffic?

…We came back in the January-February timeframe … All in all, actually, we are doing better than when we launched.

The banks don’t have to advertise when they go through us. Secondly, they don’t need to have any manpower to run this system. I mean, at best a CFO spends 15 minutes a week on our system. So there is no IT expense, there is no advertising expense and there is no manpower expense. [Editor’s note: banks pay a fee to participate in the online auctions.] …On top of it, the fourth key benefit, since it’s a private, negotiated transaction, it’s fully automated, there’s no human involved – some banks are working a dual-rate system. Accounts done over Internet with our system are higher rates, better rates, than what they offer across the board through their branches.

So walk-in customers get a different rate?

Absolutely. Cannibalization which occurs when [banks] advertise their rates across the board and then the CD rates roll over. Sometimes the cannibalization could be a good 80-90 percent. So the existing CD rolls over and then banks end up losing money. So in this case, there is no cannibalization. Because it’s not an advertised rate, it’s a private transaction. And about a dozen banks are using this to effectively lower their cost of funds … and some bankers are really, really excited about it.

Do you have any immediate plans to add to the program?

We recently introduced a way to enable banks to cross-sell. So for example, when the auction results show up, the banks will be able to put a message underneath to say, “You might be able to get another 10 basis points on your CD if you open a checking account.”… So in the next months or so, you’re going to see a lot of banks have started to use the system for cross-selling. Which traditionally, banks have not been that good at it.

So with the kind of year you’ve had, do you still expect to branch out the auction MoneyAisle idea into different areas?

We didn’t expect the deposits to go from total crunch to total flush in such a short time, I don’t think anybody did … if they did, hat’s off to them. But [the company is] spreading the wings across multiple services, multiple product offerings. Regardless of what happens in the market, we will be supportive of banks.

Top Five Biographical Facts From Chatter’s Career:

1.) Chatter spent the last 25 years working in Massachusetts.

2.) An electrical engineer by trade, Chatter spent much of his career in telecom.

3.) He founded a company called Nexabit in 1997.

4.) Nexabit was purchased for $900 million by Lucent Technologies in 1999.

5.) Chatter later formed a startup called Axiowave Networks Inc. in Marlborough.