One of the most fundamental methods to keep your credit union thriving is by continuing to onboard new members. Keeping existing members happy is crucial too, but growth will surely happen through a simplified digital account opening process.
For this reason, it's important to focus on making the account opening process as pain-free and beneficial as possible. To do this, you can follow several strategies, which involve incentives, simplification, and digitization among other things.
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Deposits Are the Lifeblood of Growth
Total personal account savings in the U.S. have dropped to $626 billion in the third quarter of 2022 from $1.5 trillion three years ago, affecting FIs' ability to issue loans. Improving new account onboarding processes can help credit unions attract deposits and support members in managing expenses.
Making New Accounts Simple
The single simplest way to entice people into opening an account with your credit union is by simplifying the process as much as possible. Doing this also means making this process as digital and hassle-free as possible.
Steps to Simplify Account Opening:
- Enable Digital Account Openings: Allow prospects to open accounts digitally through their phones or other digital devices without visiting your branch.
- Minimize Documentation Requirements: Avoid requiring hard-copy documents and instead use digital alternatives for ID verification and other necessary documents.
- Streamline the Process: Reduce the number of steps and information fields required. Focus on what’s essential to open an account.
- Provide Clear Instructions: Ensure that the steps for opening an account are clearly communicated and easy to follow.
- Offer Assistance: Provide support through multiple channels (chat, phone, email) to assist applicants throughout the process.
In other words, enable account openings without in-branch visits or an intensive manual account opening process that requires considerable effort from your potential members. Refining this process will require trial and error but best practices exist.
Imagine a potential member considering a new account with your local, supposedly convenient credit union branch. Through your organization's advertising, they're led to believe that they can open an account digitally in just minutes without going in-branch. However, once they begin the process, they discover several key steps that require printing out or locating a proof of address or ID and personally delivering these items into a branch during working hours.
It’s very likely that this potential member will drop the process under the pretext that they can do it later. Whether that later happens is questionable.
Best Practices:
- Fully Digital Process: Ensure applicants can complete the entire account opening process digitally within minutes.
- User-Friendly Interface: Design an intuitive and easy-to-navigate platform.
- Mobile Optimization: Optimize the process for mobile devices to accommodate the increasing use of smartphones.
Tech Solutions for Digital Account Setup
Tech and cloud-based solutions exist that let credit union's facilitate account openings and ID verifications purely digitally. A vast part of the Fintech industry is based on these digital account services and there's no reason why your credit union can't apply them too.
One key part of this process lies in developing a strong digital customer identification program (CIP) that doesn't rely on hard-copy documents and avoids irrelevant field or data requests for ID verification. Such a program, tied to your online banking platform, can validate applicant information against third-party ID verification systems to simplify account opening across the board.
Make Member Onboarding Easy with FLEX Technology
The member onboarding process requires several key steps aside from the digitization of account opening steps. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be difficult or incredibly costly to implement. In fact, the opposite is true--you can reduce your own costs by making it easier for applicants to increase their time savings. FLEX's member onboarding guide can help you navigate the steps your credit union can take to grow its member base in the most frictionless way possible for both applicants and your own staff.
