Losing Half a Million on NetBank's Fall

The most interesting reader feedback from Monday's story about the failure of NetBank Inc. (formerly a unit of NetBank(NTBK)) came from Chris Coulthrust, president of Applied Cognetics in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Applied Cognetics had a million dollars in uninsured NetBank deposits. It looks like he's out about half that amount.

"I was one of NetBank's first customers back in 1998," Coulthrust says. "I moved to them after being turned away from three different banks who did not understand our business and refused to open a business account for me."

Applied Cognetics is a software developer, specializing in providing its online marketing and lead-generation platforms to Internet marketers and the consumer-finance industry. The company also provides automated underwriting engines for lenders.

Later, as his business grew, Coulthrust opened several business accounts. Only recently did Applied Cognetics keep larger uninsured balances with NetBank, so he had never considered the risk of having uninsured deposits.

"I found out about NetBank's failure last Friday when I logged into the Web site to check the status of incoming wires," Coulthrust says. After seeing the announcement of the bank failure and the transfer of accounts to ING Direct Bank (a unit of ING Group (ING)), Coulthrust immediately called several customers and asked them to hold back their wires.