LAKE MARY, Fla.-Credit unions' technology investments in the second half of 2012 will likely continue to be in the areas of relationship management and loan origination, according to Harland Financial Solutions.
"With the changes brought on by the Durbin amendment, the immediate value of members that credit unions bring in is not guaranteed," said SamKilmer, VP-market development, who in an earlier forecast for Credit Union Journal on the first half of the year had also discussed relationship-creation technology. "It is important for credit unions to get their members into loans faster, rather than sitting in a share account or maybe a share draft account with a low balance."
Looking forward to Q3 amd Q4, Kilmer said Harland continues to see interest in CRM. He said the premise of building better members more quickly and getting to five products faster than three years have become goals at many CUs.
"The key is not just adding, say, online account opening, it is adding multi-channel relationships with members," he said. "The account opening experience should be consistent online or in-branch, including cross-selling and offering other opportunities. It is beyond a transaction; it is about good interactions with members both online and in the branch."
Transactions are a given, Kilmer assessed, but for CUs the focus should be on the interaction, and helping members move from two products to five products. "That is where a lot of our time is spent now because that is where credit unions grow."
'Gathering Steam'
Another element that is "really gathering steam" is payments and how they relate to the CU-member relationship, he said. Going back 20 years, Kilmer said credit unions have always wanted to be the primary financial institution (defined at various times as having the checking account, then an active debit card, and more recently, online bill pay). The new standard: how active the PFI is in the "money movement" process.
"The new battlefield is account-to-account transfers, or A2A, or person-to-person (P2P). A2A is a person moving money from one of his accounts to another one of his accounts, as opposed to P2P, which is paying someone else," he explained. "Credit unions are starting to see the connectivity between online payments and mobile payments. Credit unions want to get in the middle of this, rather than see their members go to third parties, such as opening a PayPal account."
With this new technology become more available, Kilmer said Harland is seeing much more interest in P2P. The company launched a P2P product in October 2011 and has already signed more than 20 financial institutions-well over half of which are CUs.
"This gets back to asking how to use technology to build, sustain and retain members and increase their primary financial institution status among their members," he assessed. "There is a lot of really good potential here."
