BB&T Corp. says it has
Paal Kaperdal, a senior vice president at BB&T and its e-business manager, said his company developed the online application in house so it could be integrated better with other existing systems and processes.
"We are making an increased investment in the online channel to better meet the needs of our clients and for generating more business," Mr. Kaperdal said.
BB&T accepted its first new customer online using the new system in October during testing, he said, and the company announced the system's availability Tuesday because executives felt comfortable it could handle the volume they anticipate.
The automated system replaced a version, in operation since March 2005, that required manual verification of account information. The new system can verify customer data in real time, and it includes a funds-transfer module to fund the account from either BB&T or other checking accounts.
In a report in late September, Kevin J. St. Pierre, an analyst at AllianceBernstein Holding LP's Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC,
Mr. Kaperdal said he could not say whether BB&T plans to offer such accounts, but he did say, "We have built this so we can do that."
Mr. St. Pierre did not return a call seeking comment Tuesday.
Steve Ellis, a partner at the New York research firm Change Sciences Group Inc., said that the $121.4 billion-asset Winston-Salem, N.C., company now has one of the industry's most advanced account-opening systems.
While 77% of regional banks offer some kind of online account application, only 35% of the banks support electronic funding, and only BB&T and Wells Fargo & Co. offer instant approval, he said. "What banks like BB&T are doing is taking it to the next level."
