SAN DIEGO-Recognizing that switching electronic payments is a painful manual process, California Coast CU provides a "concierge" service to new members, said Donna Johnson, senior marketing specialist at the $1.6-billion CU here.
"We don't offer bill pay automation," Johnson explained. "Members bring in their bills, and our staff helps them set up their bill pay."
On the opposite coast, SECU has a similar story. Switch processes for bill pay, ACH and direct deposit are not automated, said Rick Rhoads, SVP-eServices at the Raleigh, N.C.-based CU. "Switching to a new checking account is involved, but we work hard to make it as easy as possible for our members."
If any CU could automate bill pay and ACH-switching, it would be SECU, which runs an electronic bill pay platform in-house. "There is no reasonable method to go into the member's online banking account elsewhere and get the data," Rhoads explained.
SECU's online "Switch Kit" provides new members with a worksheet to print and notate all previous bill pay information from their old checking account. The member refers to the completed worksheet when setting up bills online at SECU.
For active automated payments, the new member fills out a different paper worksheet and gives it to SECU. SECU sends a letter to each merchant on the worksheet with instructions to move the origination to the new account.
"Our employees work one-to-one with the member and use tools we developed to track that the various items have transferred to the new SECU checking account," Rhoads said.
BECU threw out its online switch kit, said Howie Wu, VP-virtual banking at the $9.5-billion CU in Tukwila, Wash. "The paper-based process actually created more work and a poor experience. Members had to fill out switch paperwork twice because the FI they switched from didn't accept our paperwork. Until someone is able to deliver an exceptional experience, we won't provide a switch solution."
