Earlier this year, Corporate Insight, a New York-based competitive intelligence and user experience research firm, released its fourteenth annual Credit Card Monitor Awards. These awards rate different banks in terms of their online and mobile car tools in a variety of area and awards gold, silver and bronze medals. This year, Chase won big, with three gold medals.

Corporate Insight's gives awards in eight categories, and it looks at not just the quality of the features on a bank's public-facing website, but it also looks at the quality of private site features, such as account maintenance capabilities and other features that impact the user experience. This year's awards cover both online and smartphone tools.

In terms of winning gold, the bank has to demonstrate that it has the most robust and valuable tools. Corporate Insight looks at features and intuitive functionality and awards its top prize to those that manage to get the most valuable combination of these factors. It awards silver to those firms whose tools have good value but sometimes miss the mark when it comes to having the best attributes. Bronze award winners have tools that give their cardholders valuable experience or service, but there aren't as functional as the top players.

In the category of card comparison tools, Chase won gold for the second year in a row for its ability to create a table that allows for comparison and adjustment among credit card products without having to leave the tool. Chase also utilized responsive design in its tool, which allows a user to have a great viewing experience that's flexible to the type of platform and is consistent across both web browser and mobile platforms.

When it comes to transaction history and search tools, it's hard to beat American Express. It won a fourth consecutive gold medal in this category, with a transaction history tool that's well-designed and allows users to add in a number of filters to be able to find and sort their transactions. Corporate Insight also judges the available account history, sortable data points and the level of detail users can get on a particular transaction, in addition to the search and filter capabilities. Another metric they looked at this year was the ability to dispute a charge directly from a transaction table.

While Amex may have a stellar available account history, Chase was deemed the leader when it comes to a credit card company's statement center. It has an extensive statement archive through which cardholders can access PDF statements, and it offers the same number of PDFs across both its web and smartphone platforms.

Chase also won the gold for account alerts, with essential alert services for both web and mobile apps, including push notifications, emails and SMS alerts.

For card payment tools, Capital One, last year's silver medalist, leapt up to gold based on its mobile payments platform, where, just like its web platform, users may make automatic payments.

Discover claimed the top honors in two categories: balance transfers and private site help. Corporate Insight noted that it's just one of three firms that offer the option of doing balance transfers via mobile device. Its user-friendly tools also offer multiple transfer options that utilize linked bank accounts. Its second gold came for having a centralized help center with extensive FAQs that explain how to manage an online Discover account.

Finally, USAA nabbed a gold for mobile self-service and help, which is a new category in this year's rankings. This award covers self-service options on mobile apps, including the ability to order new cards, report lost or stolen cards, update contact information and change user IDs and passwords. USAA's iPhone app has eleven self-service options and has a voice-responsive automated assistant.

Corporate Insight selects its Monitor Awards annually in a variety of financial service categories to companies that offer excellent online and offline experiences.