One of the biggest opportunities in digital banking today is closing the account-opening gap. The gap is the close-rate online (generally well below 50%) compared with the much-higher percentage at the new-accounts desk in a bank branch (see note 1).

There are hundreds of ways to improve digital account opening (see previous posts), but I stumbled across a new one this week. WiseBanyan, a new robo-advisor I’m quite impressed with, sent me a reminder to use my invite before it expired (see first screenshot below).

The email provides two choices (three if you count “delete”): Open My Account or Extend My Invite. Naturally, as a life-long procrastinator, I chose “extend.” That’s when WiseBanyan unleashed today’s Tuesday Tip. I was delivered to a simple webpage (second screenshot) offering a simple way to add the task to my calendar. Procrastination foiled! (We’ll see next week).

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Screenshots:
1. Email from WiseBanyan (19 April 2015)

2. WiseBanyan “extend my invite” landing page

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Note:
1. I know we are comparing pineapples and peanut butter; of course, more people abandon online account opening (or its ecommerce counterpart, the shopping cart). It’s easy to “kick the tires” online by starting an application with no intent on finishing it. But few people would make a trip to a branch and sit down with a branch staffer unless they were serious about opening an account.