Jupiter Media Metrix has introduced the financial services industry’s first index based entirely on online consumer behavior and performance metrics.

The Jupiter CORE (Composite Rating of Online Effectiveness) Index is designed to help financial services firms assess their competitive strengths and areas of exposure online. It will be published quarterly and is made up of individual scores relating to unique visitors, usage intensity (time), usage frequency (number of visits per month), customer loyalty or transition (the ability to migrate off-line customers online).

Financial institutions that achieve the highest combination of consumer attention, unique visitor traffic and online transition of their total customer base will perform the highest in the Jupiter CORE ranking system. BankofAmerica.com, WellsFargo.com and KeyBank.com lead the Jupiter Banking CORE, while E*Trade Financial Network, TDWaterhouse.com and Sharebuilder.com top the Jupiter Brokerage CORE. CSFBdirect.com, now owned by Bank of Montreal, ranks ninth among thebrokers.

“The Jupiter CORE represents the best banks and brokerages in the U.S. who are online,” said James Van Dyke, Jupiter research director and senior analyst. “Jupiter created the CORE to help banks and brokerages set specific online goals in comparison to their competitors. For the first time, financial services companies will be able to expand benchmarks outside their own firm in order to keep pace with a dynamic industry.”

The Brokerage CORE indicates that customers of TDWaterhouse.com, PutnamInvestments.com and AmericanCentury.com are the most intense online users. According to Jupiter analysts, intensity shows how effectively financial institutions get customers to use their respective Web sites longer and treat their sites as indispensable. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Chase dominate the unique visitor index of the Banking CORE.

The Loyalty Index measures how often secure visitors to a given Web site also visit at least one other site in the same industry category, whether it be in secure or non-secure modes. Thus, this index demonstrates both consumers’ loyalty and Web sites’ functionality. According to Jupiter analysts, if customers often go to Web sites of other financial institutions, a respective brokerage or bank may not be offering all of the services or utility that the consumer is seeking. Banks with the most loyal online users include KeyBank.com, PNCBank.com and AmSouth.com, while online brokerages include Merrill Lynch, ShareBuilder.com, and CSFBDirect.com.