A year on, and more than 200 million page views later, the Bank of Butterfield claims interest in its Internet banking service - Butterfield Direct - is growing "exponentially".

This according to assistant vice-president for Electronic Deliver Systems Naji Hajjar who said the service is now averaging 350 new customers a month. The Bank claims in terms of dollar amounts to have $1.75 billion in Butterfield Direct accounts.

The site was launched last January to a limited audience of staff and their families, and the official launch fell on March 29, 2001. Although the Bank did not reveal its total number of Butterfield Direct clients, it put use by bank staff at greater than 50 percent.

Mr. Hajjar said the bank changed its internal policy to allow staff to do their personal banking from their desktops. He said this has meant staff are using the banking hall less which increases the level of customer service for other clients.

The product offers clients a wide-range of services including the ability to check all accounts, the ability to convert statement views to any currency and to transfer money between accounts. It also allows third party payments to either Bank of Bermuda or Butterfield accounts, including 21 Island vendors. Companies can use the system for processing payroll "at the click of a button" after uploading information from their accounting software programmes.

The bank, as the only Bermuda financial institution currently offering an Internet banking service, was asked if its success could be attributed to lack of local competition. Butterfield Direct product manager Girvan Campbell said Bermudians are typically "loyal" to the bank they have a history with.

To that end, he continued, the bank had not seen a massive increase in customers moving over to the Bank of Butterfield on the basis of its Internet banking service.

But Mr. Campbell added: "There have been several large corporate clients which have switched to Butterfield because of our Internet banking service and we find that new account users often sign up for the service."

Mr. Campbell said the system is user-friendly: "If you can read and manipulate a mouse, you can use the product." He added that free one-on-one demonstrations of the product are available.

In terms of security, the bank said it is continuously working to ensure the security of the site.

And the bank revealed that it has hired an external company to perform security tests on the site.

Mr. Hajjar said stake has been commissioned to perform scheduled "blind penetration testing" of the site which he claimed is in compliance with the highest security standards including a 1024 bit public key and 128 bit encryption.

The Bank said its latest test took place in November and stake reportedly found that Butterfield Direct consistently met or exceeded current industry security standards. It reported: "Throughout the engagement it was apparent that Bank of Butterfield had undertaken significant effort to ensure that functionality and security were properly balanced to provide the customer with a convenient online banking experience that did not expose them to undue risk."

But Mr. Hajjar told The Royal Gazette that the security test is limited to attempts to access secure elements on the site. It does not involve what Mr. Hajjar called "brute force attacks", such as the attacks that brought down Yahoo! and AOL.

"We have not asked them to degrade performance, but to confirm that security levels are up to scratch."

The "blind penetration security tests" are scheduled on a regular basis and the Bank is aware of when they are to occur.