The dream account opening experience

For credit unions, digital account opening is a core competency that yields huge returns. Particularly after the pandemic, consumer preferences have indicated that it’s essential to be able to open accounts online and fund them without going into the bank.

Over the last 12 months, we spoke with senior executives from 130+ credit unions who are currently looking to improve their digital account opening experience. With the recent changes in the market environment and the increasing focus on deposit growth, digital account opening has become a top priority across the industry.

Has your organization prioritized deposit growth and digital account opening recently? It’s exciting to talk about, but the process often seems nebulous and many credit union executives are more familiar with customers coming into the branch the old-fashioned way.

Luckily, enhancing your digital account opening experience isn’t actually complicated. In addition to being valuable from a growth perspective, it’s also simple and can be implemented fairly easily. However, it does need a few key pieces in order to be successful. Your potential members and clients need to have a good experience in order for your digital channels to bring you any kind of return.

One of the key elements is an effective KYC mechanism that can check for fraud quickly and efficiently in order to keep the member moving through the process without getting exasperated. For this piece, it’s helpful to look into technology products that can check a host of factors like IP address, email, phone, device velocity, address etc in the background and triage applicants based on fraud risk. Applicants that are high risk can be asked to complete additional ID verification steps. Tools can also handle OFAC checks in the background while the member is actually opening an account. Focusing on keeping the user experience smooth while also collecting all of the information you need is key to staying relevant and winning the business of new applicants.

Another key area is the funding process. New accounts that are not funded just increase the costs for your organization. Collecting ACH or debit card authorization as part of the account opening process simplifies the experience for the member while significantly increasing the likelihood of funds being deposited into the new account. Cotribute’s platform includes easy ways to add instant funding to your digital account opening experiences without any heavy lifting from your team.

For more details on what a successful account opening experience looks like, check out Cotribute’s whitepaper, The Five Fundamental Steps for Digital Account Opening.