Conducted for By E EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Customers of financial services companies obtain significant benefits from information sharing, including increased convenience, personalized service, and real savings of time and money. Ernst & Young estimated the benefits to customers of the 90 large banks, insurance and securities companies that are members of The Financial Services Roundtable (FSR). Based on publicly available industry data and a survey of the FSR membership, 1 the findings are: ♦ Trust and the Use of Information. U.S. customers provide information to their financial institutions because they trust them to protect that information and use it wisely. To the extent these companies share customer information with affiliates and/or third parties, the information sharing provides customers with more services at lower prices, and allows the companies to increase efficiency, lower costs, and pass savings forward to customers. ♦ Savings Per Household. Information sharing saves FSR members ' customers on average $195 per customer household per year. In addition, the average FSR household saves close to 4 hours per year because of convenience provided by information sharing. ♦ Money Saved. For all customers of the FSR members, the current dollar savings due to information sharing total about$17 billion per year. About $9 billion of this total come