Speed and care don’t necessarily go together but the latest new account-opening solutions providers are competing on the basis of both.

Online, $511 billion Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia Corporation recently announced its launch of an automated online account opening and funding tool for customers and potential customers (see article). The new feature uses CashEdge’s FundNow product to provide “a risk-managed service for instantly and securely funding new accounts online.” The bank first introduced online account opening in 2000 and now opens more than 15,000 accounts online per month, which it says is equivalent to the volume of over 150 branches. Wachovia serves more than 12 million retail and small business customers; of those, more than 3 million use online banking.

According to New York-based CashEdge, 95 percent of new online account applicants drop out between enrollment and funding, leaving financial institutions searching for other ways to acquire these customers. An automated opening and funding solution enables institutions to “fully leverage their online channels as real-time customer acquisition channels.”

Ron Kerr, Wachovia's director of Internet retail products, says installing the FundNow product was “the last piece of the puzzle” for his company's online account opening system, which had been operating for several years. “We just wanted to round out the capabilities for those customers that wanted to fund the account right there, when they're opening it. This has helped close that gap for us.”

Without providing specifics, Kerr added that the volume of online funding since introducing the product has met Wachovia's expectations and “we've gotten great reviews from customers.”

Wachovia's compliance, loss management and legal staff had been involved “every step of the way” during the selection and introduction of FundNow, Mr. Kerr said. As a further backstop, the loss management team reviews online accounts the day after they're opened to flag and investigate anything questionable, he says.

For the branch, too, multiple new solutions promise to speedily authenticate would-be customers. Churchton, Md.-based BANKDetect says the analytical powers of its software needs no more than 8 seconds to scan a driver’s license and access the daily updated Bank Closed Account Reporting System (BANKCARS) database of more than 168 million checking accounts as well as information on unpaid returned checks from thousands of merchants and closed-for-cause accounts from banks. At the same time, the customer identification program (CIP) process performs more than 130 additional identification checks and the software searches the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) database to meet regulatory requirements.

The product, called BANKCARS-CONNECT, has been in use for about three months at First National Bank of Pontotoc in northern Mississippi. New account representative Chris Springer says the $208 million-asset institution has not yet found any fraudulent account applications, “but it gives us a good feeling to know if a form of identification had been tampered with. Just knowing we could catch it easily is beneficial to us.”

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