Online account openings: is it a worthwhile service? do customers need to appear in-person?

• Position: MARKETERS' FORUM - Ephrata National Bank - First Hope Bank - First Montana Bank

Below are excerpts from a recent online question-and-answer session conducted by marketers who participate in the ABA Marketing Network's Online Community.

Do You Allow Customers to Open Deposit Accounts Online?

I'm interested in results banks are experiencing with opening deposit accounts (checking, savings) online. This would seem like an obvious service to offer customers in order to provide them with an added level of convenience.

However, I haven't been able to find any research confirming this is something customers are clamoring for and using when available. I've actually seen research indicating millennials prefer to open accounts in person.

Craig Rodenberger

Ephrata National Bank | Ephrata, Pa.

We Are in the Process of Launching this Service Now

Before purchasing the product, we contacted several reference banks and each of them were seeing between eight and 20 new customer accounts being opened each month.

We plan to heavily promote this new service online through behavioral targeting and traditional online advertising and will expand the campaign outside of our current market footprint.

Additionally, we will be purchasing iPads for each of our branches and plan to use the online account opening product when our representatives are out visiting our commercial clients or in the community at trade shows, job fairs, etc. I think we will see most of our volume from this approach.

We made the decision to go entirely paperless with this account--electronic signatures, ACH funding and electronic disclosure acceptance. The customer will never need to set foot in a physical branch if they choose not to, and there's nothing they need to mail in to us.

This was a long-fought battle between marketing and operations, but I believe it will be worth it in the end. In my opinion, this is the only way we would have a chance at being successful with online account opening.

We don't currently offer our entire suite of products online, only one checking account (our most popular), one savings account and a debit card. We plan to revisit adding CDs, money market accounts and additional checking account options in the future.

We established a new "branch" for all accounts opened online for tracking purposes. Management has lofty goals for this branch. We hope to catch up to our bricks and mortar branches within three years and see enough activity to warrant a dedicated, full-time online branch staff person.

Ashley Kuehn

First Montana Bank | Missoula...