There is nothing like a great fall weekend on any given Saturday, with college football and tailgating for the big event. However, one fall Saturday’s tailgating plan ended up a differently. My daughter had been accepted to a wonderful college away from home. My first thought was about her safety, including banking away from home and having access to a campus ATM.
My goal to add a simple ATM account relationship with my daughter and provide the ability to move money from my account to hers should have been an easy process. My choice of institutions and the only convenient ATM for my daughter was narrowed down to only one choice, a top 20 bank, out of multiple bank and credit union choices.
The branch account opening experience turned into a long, drawn out exercise. My daughter and I sat down with the bank rep in the typical cubical after waiting for 20 minutes on this particular Saturday. From that point, my daughter grew anxious as every 5 minutes clicked away, as the bank rep opened the new account, re-keying profile information several times. By about the 30 minute mark, my daughter was distracted with text messaging, as the account opening process drug on.

The conclusion (at 55 minutes, start to finish) included the bank rep stepping out of the cubical to make a copy of one the disclosures. (One of three disclosures was marked "original" with a post-it note.) Needless to say, the account opening event cut into our tailgating plan for that day. While I should have been eating a burger in anticipation of the big game, I ended up chewing up time instead.
My personal observation from this experience quickly addresses the question "why would any branch rep have to re-key a consumer profile over and over again?" The observation from this particular in-branch account opening experience included the rep keying in consumer information directly into the OFAC screen, ChexSystems screen, a credit bureau screen, some other unidentified screen and then the having to log into another random bank screen to complete the session. There was no mention of cross-sell and eservice offerings like Internet banking or eStatement. In addition, we found out that the ability to move money from another bank account into this particular bank was not available.

Since my daughter fits the "Gen Y" profile, her only comment was "why couldn’t we have open the account and order the ATM card online?" Since I already had four existing deposit account relationships already, that was a good question from a desirable target age group that does everything online.

Recent research has highlighted the importance of online account automation to understand that today's typical consumers are dealing with Amazon.com and eBay, so they're going to be easily frustrated when they land on some institution webpage to research an account that fits their needs and quickly find out that they can't simply pick it and fund it.

Banks and credit unions of any asset size can use uMonitor New Account & Funding solution to streamline the account opening process across all delivery channels. Imagine how an existing customer could experience their next branch visit and get express check-out service with their next account and fund it from an existing deposit account, while the branch rep drives a personal relationship. In addition, you can provide new convenience options that utilize the same account automation with the online delivery channel and even provide an in branch kiosk, where new and existing customers that only need a simple deposit account can utilize a self service channel and fund it from another bank account.

To learn more about the uMonitor New Account Setup and Online Funding with Switch Kit solution and other innovative financial technologies such as Account-to-Account Funds Transfer Service to move your money, call 901.757.1212 to speak with a uMonitor representative today or visit www.umonitor.com.

Visit uMonitor at the
BAI Retail Delivery Conference
Las Vegas, Nevada, November 14, 15 & 16 Booth 2850