Two decades ago, the introduction of e-bills was seen as the next “killer app” that was going to secure credit unions’ position as the hub of their members’ payment activity. Reality never met the hype. After a surge of interest by credit unions, limited access to quality biller data quickly dampened their enthusiasm. While credit unions’ interest petered out, billers saw an opportunity — they could drive website traffic and consumer engagement by providing a robust payment experience that included flexible payment options, timely and actionable alerts and real-time posting. The result? Today, 76% of online bill payments occur at biller sites, according to a
But now is not the time to despair. Recent fintech innovation surrounding the increased accessibility of high-quality biller data (e.g.,
To realize the opportunity, credit unions must execute a multi-pronged strategy that includes the following key elements:
1. Aggregate biller data from multiple e-bill sources to maximize biller coverage so members can conveniently access as many bills as possible from a single location.
2. Create a data orchestration engine to ingest, normalize and organize biller and other pertinent data into an actionable format.
3. Leverage data analytics, machine learning and AI to analyze and develop insights from the data.
4. Develop an intuitive UI/UX that clearly and concisely presents members’ billing and payment activity.
5. Provide real-time insights and nudges that guide members to make more informed decisions.
6. Provide multiple payment options so members have the flexibility to fund the payment as they wish, including debit and credit cards from other financial institutions.
A biller site is great for paying one bill, but consumers typically have 10-15 bills each month to pay. That’s a lot of websites and passwords to track. To get a holistic view of their bills, members are reduced to firing up Excel to manually update and manage a spreadsheet of their payments.
This is where the opportunity lies.
Credit unions now have a path to providing members an intelligent, intuitive and convenient “bill center” to view, manage and pay all their bills in one place. Intelligence is the key distinction between a payment experience at a biller’s site and at the credit union’s bill center. With a comprehensive view of all of their members' past and current bills, as well as associated payment history, credit unions can provide their members with recommendations and alerts to help ease the burden of managing bills. This includes timely reminders to avoid late payments and fees, and the potential of negative effects on their credit rating.
With the effective execution of a robust bill center, credit unions will finally have the tools needed to bring their members back from biller sites, increase engagement and become the primary site for their members’ payment activity.
Building to a comprehensive data strategy
The opportunity for credit unions to solidify their role as their members’ payment hub grows as they layer on other readily accessible data, specifically core data, to create a cash flow forecast for the member. By automatically modelling recurring inbound cash flows (such as direct deposits and recurring account-to-account transfers) against projected bill payments and other regular disbursements, the credit union can provide members with intelligent insights to guide them to make decisions that will further improve their financial health, including saving money faster and paying off debt sooner. That’s something billers could never dream of doing.
As credit unions add additional relevant data into their data strategy – such as aggregated data from other financial institutions where the member has banking relationships – they will have a complete picture of a member’s financial health. It is only with a complete picture that credit unions can confidently recommend structural changes to how members manage their money.
With a large percentage of the population experiencing some level of financial stress, a major segment of a credit union’s membership needs help. By leveraging data and digital channels, credit unions can broadly and efficiently deliver empirically based recommendations and insights to help members optimize their money management.
In the early months of 2021, technology is finally catching up to the hype of the early aughts. With access to comprehensive, high-quality data about their members and the analytical tools to leverage the data, credit unions are now well positioned to deliver on their mission of helping their members improve their financial health.
