I was very excited this morning to meet with Atul Patel, the founder and CEO of a new startup, BankAround.  BankAround is a simple to use  web site for consumers to identify the best checking, savings, and money market rates at local, national, and online financial institutions.  He said he envisioned the concept for the business model when his brother sent him a link to join ING Direct and he felt like he could make a much more robust offering.  After working with lead generation in the financial services space for years with companies like Countrywide and LeadROI, he recognized that most of the industry was focused heavily on informing or selling consumers on debt-related products, such as mortgage loans, auto loans, home equity lines of credit, and debt consolidation.

Even vertical portals, namely BankRate, made finding information difficult because their portals were filled with editorial content and they made most of their revenue from how many banner ads you viewed. A user would have to click “6 Month CD”, then “California”, then “Orange County”, then “Anaheim”, then “Top 100″ — 5 pages for a piece of information! It’s akin to surfing through mounds of information on Orbitz and Expedia to book an airline flight. Just give me the damn info!  Farecast (acquired by Microsoft for $100mm) and Kayak.com, have done a great job simplifying the process.

BankAround was started with the vision to simplify finding the best place to save money outside the stock market (in 2008, a rough place to invest), and real estate (in 2008, who wants to go into this). BankAround profiles checking, savings, and money market rates, and allows users to search with a simple interface. Patel gives tremendous credit to James Chheng, the co-founder of BankAround, who developed the platform and software.  Chheng is also a veteran of the online lead generation and financial services spaces.

The banking industry is going through a major transformation because of the credit crisis. The Indymac closure last week and Wamu’s stock plunge, are examples of the turmoil that is concerning consumers who are simply worried they will loose their deposits. The brand names are a good place to bank, but if you can find a local credit union or thrift that provides you similar rates, why not go local. Just like you wouldn’t book a flight on an airline or airplane that was in the news for a major malfunction, you should be careful how you bank.

To top things off, American’s need to start to save more. Check out some of these stats:

• Only 53 percent of Americans say that they save at least 5% of their income, while only 57 percent of those not retired say they are saving enough for a retirement with a “desirable standard of living”.  (source: Consumer Federation of America)
• More than $1 trillion is currently stashed in bank accounts that pay 1 percent or less (source: Washington Post)
• Between 2001 and 2004, the share of U.S. households that had savings accounts dropped 8.1 percent, to 47 percent (source: Federal Reserve)

To sign up and start taking advantage of the service, go to www.bankaround.com.