Issuer E-mails and Online Statements

An update to an item in last month's issue (see Paperless Credit Card Statements) highlights the increasing use of e-mail by credit card issuers to acclimatize their customers to communicating electronically and ultimately viewing and paying their accounts balances online. Diogo Teixeira of Livermore Research Group predicts in the American Banker that 730 million e-mails will be sent by card issuers to their customers in 2003. This flurry of electronic communication would represent a 60 percent increase from 2002 volume. Issuers gather cardholder e-mail addresses from applications, remittance coupons, and online registrations. Teixeira notes that despite these address collection efforts, only 10 percent of cardholders have furnished them. He forecasts that issuer e-mails will outnumber paper notices once 25 percent of customers provide their e-mail addresses. Among the benefits to issuers of this relatively new endeavor, issuers can realize a reduction in operating expenses versus paper mailings and use e-mails for marketing purposes in addition to alerting customers about their account status and other notifications. There is wide variety among issuer e-mails in terms of content, presentation, and frequency, but Teixeira's group "...foresee that complete e-statements, without full account numbers, will soon be tested as a better way to encourage paper statement suppression enrollment."

Moriah Campbell-Holt of Gomez Inc. predicts that many of the largest retail banks will offer online statements in 2003 and 2004. Wells Fargo & Co. already offers such a service to those customers who opt not to receive paper statements. In addition to mortgage, student loan, and brokerage account statements, Wells recently added savings and checking accounts to their online offerings. Upon enrollment, customers are notified via e-mail when their statements are ready for online viewing. Since November, customers have the option of viewing all of their accounts in one statement. The latest options were demand driven and with a monthly increase in customer adoption of 200 percent, other online statements may be added to the mix.