The Rundown

• Account openings, online and in-branch, double in Octoberat BECU.
• Randolph-Brooks FCU reports 22% of new funds through ACHare from Bank of America.
• Online account opening up as much as 40% at Andera, Harlandand Fiserv.

While Bank Transfer Day, and the dump-your-bank sentiment thatserves as its backdrop, has earned a lot of media coverage andpromotional dollars among credit unions, are people reallyswitching?

The folks whose job it is to facilitate that move behind thescenes, who manage the so-called “switch kits” of electronicbanking, say it's so.

Several big credit unions and the vendors who supply theirtechnology told Credit Union Times last week theyhave seen a surge of new memberships that began when Bank ofAmerica declared its $5 a month debit fee in late September.

“We've more than doubled our usual rate of membership growth inthe past 17 or 18 days,” said Howie Wu, vice president of virtualbanking at the $9.5 billion, 700,000-member BECU in Tukwila,Wash.

“We usually average about 6,000 to 7,000 new members a month,but from the date of Bank of America's announcement to today, we'vetotaled 10,400 new members,” Wu said Thursday.

A half a nation away, “We're on track to open more accounts inone month than we ever have before,” said Mary O'Rourke, vicepresident of electronic services at the $4.4 billion,357,000-member Randolph-Brooks FCU in Live Oak, Texas.

Several major and regional banks already had begun raising feesin anticipation of losing income to the new interchange cap, but itseems to be Bank of America's move that set the stage for aFacebook post by a Los Angeles art dealer to go viral and launch the ad hoc,anti-bank holiday that debuts Nov. 5.

RBFCU already had been sweetening the pot, raising the 10 cents per transaction it waspaying back to debit users to 15 cents after the Oct. 1 interchangecap took effect. The Bank of America announcement just made thingshappen faster, O'Rourke said.

“We were averaging about 700 accounts a month and then saw thatgo up to about 1,000 a month when we began the cash back, and sincethe beginning of the month we've gone up to about 50 new accounts aday,” she said.

New accounts funded by credit or debit cards don't reveal theirsource like ACH transfers do, O'Rourke noted, but she said throughthat major channel they've seen the amount from Bank of America gofrom averaging about 7% of incoming funds before the announcementto 22% now.

Charlie Kroll is the other part of that “they.” He's the founderand CEO of Andera Inc., a pioneer in online account opening who'sProvidence, R.I., company now hosts the transfer activity, theheart of the switch kit, for more than 500 credit unions and banks.

“We saw a spike in volume the day Bank of America actuallyannounced the fee, which is pretty predictable, but then it went upabout 40% the next day and has stayed at that level ever since,”Kroll said.

He also noted, “Those ACH transfers were all from opening newaccounts, so that's a really good barometer.”

Other vendors report similar numbers, including Sam Kilmer, vicepresident of market development for Harland Financial Solutions inLake Mary, Fla., the new owner, as of this year, of the uOpen and uSwitch solutions.

Kilmer said his company is hosting those applications for onlineuse by 106 clients and more in branches and that they've seenincreases in recent days ranging from as little as 10% to as muchas 40% “or even higher.”

The maturation of integrated, across-the-enterprise accountopening and funding solutions – with cross selling tools built in,too – came at a particularly good time, Kilmer said, because a lotof these new members are bringing more than just a checkingaccount.

“We're seeing an average of 2.5 accounts in the averageopening,” he said. “This is a relationship-building exercise.”

Kilmer's client, BECU, offers confirmation. “We're noticing thatthese are full relationships a lot of the time, rather than justopening up one account or getting a loan. We're getting multipleaccounts, savings and checking and loan products. They're trying tomove their relationships out of Bank of America, a lot of the time,to BECU,” said Wu, the big Seattle credit union's virtual bankingexecutive.

O'Rourke and others noted that they're seeingfunds from other institutions as well, including Wells Fargo andChase, and that account openings already naturally spike for somecredit unions this time of year.

“For instance, at Notre Dame FCU, one of our clients, when students come back inthe fall, they see a huge spike, from maybe a couple hundred amonth to over a thousand,” said Scott Bowen, business developmentmanager for the AccountCreate solution from Fiserv Inc.

Bowen did note, however, that application volume among the 180or so AccountCreate clients has doubled in the past fourmonths.

“The could be 16 reasons for that,” Bowen said, adding that theease of changing accounts – automating and integrating suchdisparate functions as OFAC checks, funding, signatures anddisclosures – also has made a difference in the number of consumersswitching.

And while a lot of credit unions across the land are heavily promoting their attributes, usingtried and new avenues of touting the credit union difference – andwithout mentioning Bank Transfer Day for the most part – somecredit union managers say even that's not necessary to capitalizeon the anti-bank sentiment.

The media coverage is one reason. O'Rourke at Randolph-BrooksFCU said one of her colleagues was being interviewed at a branchlobby and the television reporter asked to talk to a new member whohappened to be there opening up an account.

“That new member had come from Bank of America,” O'Rourkesaid.

Wu, the virtual banking boss at BECU, added, “There's a whole'enough-is-enough' mentality going on out there right now. We don'tnecessarily feel like we need to run any massive promotions to getpeople to switch. People are already doing it anyway.”

But for how long? Nov. 5, Bank Transfer Day, won't necessarilybe the end of it, some say.

“We don't know how long it will continue, but our guess is thatwe've got some time left,” said Kroll at Andera. “When people get their bank statements in Novemberand realize 'this is happening to me', there could be a whole otherwave of this.”