Electronic Statements Archives - Page 3 of 3

More Long-Term Archives at Tech CU, WaMu, and Citibank

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 14, 2007
Categories: Electronic Statements, Tech CU, Washington Mutual

In response to my post last week about online archives (here and here), I heard from Citibank and WaMu, who both support online requests for statements going back seven years (see note 1). The statements are delivered online, free of charge, and in WaMu's case, generally within five minutes. The customer receives an email notification when the statement is available. That's slightly less convenient than real-time access, but it still provides 98% of the value (see note 2), which is quite acceptable.

But the new winner, with the longest online archives, is San Jose-based Technology CU which provides free online access to statements going back to 1993. That's 14 years and counting. Tech CU also requires an online request for the back statements, but with the archives hosted in-house, they are readable within seconds. In response to my question, SVP Michael Luckin timed the query for me, and was able to login, request and receive an older statement, and logout in 20 seconds. That ought to satisfy most members.

Notes:

1. The Citibank archives were included in our previous summer 2005 report, but at that time we did not know of WaMu's expanded archives which became available in March 2005, but were evidently not discussed on its website when we did our research.

2. None of the statement archive systems mentioned here allow the customer to search for specific transactions or to manipulate/download the actual data. Only Whitney Bank offers seven years of searchable online data.

Long-term Archive Update: Chase Credit Cards Provides Six Years

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 10, 2007
Categories: Chase Bank, Credit/Debit Cards, Electronic Statements

The folks at Chase Bank were on the ball today. Less than an hour after I wrote about Whitney Bank joining the long-term statement archive club (here), I received an email from a subscriber* at Chase letting me know they offer six years of online statements for credit cards.

Below is the bank's announcement to cardholders. It's nicely designed with a green touch. And it reminds cardholders they will receive an email both when the statement is ready and when payment is due. And note the call to action: "TRY" paperless. That lets customers know they can always go back. Now that's the way to get fired up about saving trees, and the bank's cash. The only thing missing: a simple guarantee.

Grade: We score it an "A"

Chase has been working hard to move customers out of paper. So far this year, the bank has run a $35,000 sweeps to go paperless (see post here) and they currently have a popup on the credit card homepage pitching estatements (see screenshot below).

January 2007 email to Chase credit card customers

Popup at credit card site

*He earns a Starbucks card for his responsiveness. Anyone else have five or more years of statements online? Add your comments or email me.

Finally, Someone Explores the Downside of Going Paperless

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 4, 2007
Categories: Electronic Statements

I was glad to see Eleanor Laise explore both the pros AND cons of turning the paper off in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (here). Sometimes, we in the industry get so excited about the supposed win-win of estatements (save trees, save money, save clutter, thwart dumpster divers, and so on), that we forget about the very real consumer behavior issues that work against going completely paperless.

For example, here are some of the potential pitfalls of paperless finance:

Statements and notices lost in overflowing email in-boxes
Email address changes that are not communicated to the financial institution
Spam filters trapping financial notifications and alerts
Hard drives crashing and erasing records
New computers being installed and records lost in the process
Laptops being stolen along with the digital papertrail
Computers infected with viruses rendering them inoperable or worse, sending financial data to the thieves
Stress at tax-time trying to remember web addresses and login credentials to access last year's financial info
Finding out on April 14 that your credit card issuer only stores 12 months of records online, so Jan/Feb/Mar of the last tax year are no longer available online, and will take days to retrieve through customer service
Forgetting to rebalance your investments because you never take the time to login and look at your online statement
Forgetting to report investment income/losses on your taxes because you had no paper trail and forgot about the account
Trying to explain to the tax auditor that you don't have paper copies because you "are saving trees"
Backup files being lost, forgotten, or corrupted

At one time or another, everything on this last has happened to me. That's why, even though I prefer trees to be alive, I've resisted going paperless for most bank and credit card statements (note 1). Also, as an industry observer, I like to see the statement stuffers for research purposes.

Action Item
However, most of these problems can be solved over time by a single online banking improvement:

Guaranteed, long-term storage of financial transaction records, statements, check images, and other financial documents.

By long-term we mean at least five years to cover tax audits. But much better would be life-of-the-account storage, which we believe is a tremendous retention tool and much less costly than free bill payment. See our Online Banking Report, "Lifetime Statement Archives," for the full business case.

Update: Gonzobanker published a how-to on going paperless today (here).

Note:

1. Of course, I'd save many more trees by turning my newspaper subscriptions off. A few days worth of newspapers at our house weighs more than a year's worth of financial statements. But I still like the scanability and serendipity of browsing a printed publication.