GRAND MARAIS, Minn.-Electronic statements are suddenly popular at North Shore FCU here-and the credit union is saving $900 per month by generating the documents internally.
"Members are 'all over' e-statements once they see the way we have presented them and integrated them into online banking," said Mark Summers, president at the $121-million FCU.
In the past, members may have been slow to sign up for electronic statements because they didn't know about the option, suggested Summers. Even if members knew about e-statements, the opt-in process required the member to investigate.
Now, signing up for e-statements requires minimal effort, Summers explained. When a member using paper statements logs-in to Internet banking, e-statement icons are displayed. "The icons appear 'grayed-out.' When the member clicks on an icon, we direct them to a page that features instant e-statement enrollment online." After a quick and compliant sign-up process, the member's archive of statements is instantly made available.
"Through this method, we'll have doubled our number of e-statement users in less than one year," Summers said.
The 8,000-member CU has 4,200 active Internet banking users. Currently, 40% of online bankers uses e-statements, gaining access to monthly savings, checking and loan statements under single sign-on through Internet banking, said Summers.
North Shore FCU presents paper statements as a last resort during member onboarding, he added. "Our approach is to tell new members they'll be receiving electronic statements-unless they don't have Internet access." The CU has offered e-statements for 10 years and does not allow members to choose to receive both paper and electronic statements.
North Shore's adoption spike and cost savings are courtesy of AgilityWeb, a home-banking system provided by AgilityFour, a Dandridge, Tenn.-based software provider. Usually, about 15% of online banking members receiving paper statements switch to e-statements within 60 days after the AgilityWeb e-statement service is launched at a credit union, according to Kai Ravnborg, AgilityFour president and CEO.
The e-statement feature allows North Shore to pull data directly from the core system, Summers continued. Thus, the CU can eliminate the hassles and costs associated with a third-party statement provider.
"With our previous provider, members had to follow an e-mail link to an external website and authenticate themselves before they could access e-statements," he said.
'Many Stuck In The 90's
NSCU spent many hours keeping email addresses current so members would receive the e-mail link to statements, Summers said. "And members fairly frequently had trouble logging in to the external site. We'd support them, even though we weren't housing the service."
"Most homebanking vendors are stuck in a '90s mode of thinking, so they perform single sign-on links to third-party vendors," added Ravnborg. "To them, home banking is balances, history, funds transfer, and interfaces to a third party."
With AgilityWeb, North Shore can provide members with multiple years of statement history, a big improvement over the previous three-month limit, Summers said.
The previous vendor charged North Shore the same price for paper statements as for e-statements: 10 cents per page, said Summers. "That was the impetus for me to begin searching around for a different electronic statement solution. I was sure it had to be dramatically less expensive to produce the e-statement than the paper statement."
North Shore paid a flat fee for AgilityWeb and no longer pays per page. Hence, the CU has been able to recoup the flat fee in about four months, he said.
The AgilityWeb interface to North Shore FCU's data-processing system is so thorough that the CU can show members a host of core data, said Summers. That helps North Shore "create an electronic version of the credit union."
