I have been banking with a commercial bank and local credit union for a while. Both institutions provide great service at their respective branches but the online experience with the commercial bank is much richer compared to the credit union. As a business owner I regularly use Wire Transfer for paying vendors and consultants and the entire process takes about 20 – 30 minutes each time at the credit union branch. Being a silicon-valley technologist I could not resist putting on my technology hat for thinking about an efficientwire transfer process.

Let’s consider a certain member makes at least 1 wire transfer each month to the same vendor or consultant. The current process at the local credit union branch is shown below

Now if at Step 3 the member finds any error then additional time is required for correction and that step will need to be performed again. This entire process takes anywhere from 20 – 30 minutes each time or more if there is an error.

It is understandable that wire transfer may be subject to regulations and may also require the member to visit the branch for providing identity proof. Now, without compromising on the regulatory requirements the entire experience can be improved and branch time can be reduced by more than 50% as shown in the flow below.

This approach uses “Alerts & Notification” or workflow for saving more than 50% of branch time.

In this case the member types the wire request instead of hand writing the request form. Courtesy digital technology the usage of pen and paper has reduced significantly making typing more efficient. Further the information typed by the member can be recorded in the database. On the scheduled day and time (See Step 2) when the member visits the branch the staff generates the corporate version of the wire transfer document (See Step 3) rather than type from the hand written form.

This process can be made even more efficient if the online banking application provides “Reuse as Template” feature eliminating the need for our certain member to type the same information each month. The use of “Alerts & Notification” can be leveraged even more by acknowledging the

1. Receipt of the member request
2. Sending reminder via email or SMS, say 1 hour prior to the scheduled branch visit

Note – The objective here is to convey the advantage of optimizing a process or provide convenience. I am sure there are exceptions that will need to be handled.

Providing convenience features that saves time for members will always be appreciated considering the busy schedule we all live with. Though this post has used “Alerts & Notification” for optimizing the wire transfer process, I think it can be leveraged for opening new bank account, credit card, home and auto loan accounts as well. The process needs to incorporate workflow for approvals, use “Alerts & Notification” effectively and finally 1 branch visit for verifying identity to complete the process.

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