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Meriwest CU will be the first Pinwheel customer to launch on the Terafina/Candescent platform in 2025.
Q: Why did you decide to invest in a frictionless direct deposit switching solution in your account opening flow?
A: We have known switching direct deposit was core to primacy for at least 5 years and that profitability on accounts enrolled in direct deposit are 50% higher. But we couldn’t figure out how to enable it effectively online. There was far too much friction in the experience for it to be successful. We have waited for there to be effective digital deposit switch solutions. And of course, we loved that Pinwheel was available on our banking platform,Terafina/ Candescent, which made it very easy for us to get started.
Q: How many solutions did you evaluate? What made Pinwheel Deposit Switch stand out?
A: We reviewed 3 more companies but Pinwheel was the only company that had direct relationships with payroll providers to enable a truly frictionless experience. We suspected the differentiation in the Pinwheel experience made possible by these direct connections with payroll providers would put them in a class of their own for performance. We then validated this hypothesis by speaking to the customers of some of Pinwheel’s competitors, who confirmed conversion rates were subpar and did not deliver on expectations.
Q: Prior to implementing Pinwheel, what was your rate of DD enrollment for new households within their first 3 months of tenure?
A: Meriwest captures direct deposit organically today and with the implementation of Pinwheel we plan to begin targeted campaigns with incentives for high value customers. At any given point 42% of active digital banking customers are enrolled in direct deposit and we know we can do much better with Pinwheel powering our account opening flow and enrollment campaigns.
Q: What is your vision for how Pinwheel will upgrade your digital experience
A: We plan to enable direct deposit switching at account opening, as well as promote easy direct deposit throughout the customer journey to activated accounts who have not yet enrolled their Direct Deposit.
Q: Now that you can offer an easy way to switch, will you be making any changes to the way you promote the benefits of direct deposit?
A: Absolutely. We have not yet attempted to incentivize our members to enroll in Direct Deposit and have generally assumed that those who wanted to would do the work to make it happen. Now that we have a frictionless way to prompt enrollment in the digital experience, we will be launching targeted banners to activated customers who have not yet enrolled their direct deposit. We have also developed a “next best offer” campaign infrastructure that will allow us to offer tiered incentives for specific members to take advantage of direct deposit. Our “next best offer” decision engine evaluates all potential offers that a member is eligible for and calculates which offer is expected to have the highest ROI and probability of customer response.
Q: Are there other customer problems you are looking to solve to progress your primacy goals that aren’t addressed by improving ease of enrolling in direct deposit?
A: We want to shift from transactional relationships to advice-based relationships with our members. We are in a position to offer proactive assistance to customers as they make choices that impact their financial lives. We intend to continue to develop intelligent services to improve access to information just-in-time to help our members make the smartest possible financial decisions.
Q: Is capturing a new customer’s existing bills and recurring payments part of how you define primacy?
A: Our philosophy is that the more services we can offer, the better we will meet more customers’ needs. We already offer money management, credit reporting, youth accounts and online bill pay. So the answer is, absolutely yes. We plan to expand our service offerings by investing in bill switching and subscription management to meet our customers’ needs ever more completely. We look forward to expanding our Pinwheel partnership to deliver these innovative customer experience enhancements at some point in the future.
About Meriwest Credit Union
Founded in San Jose, California in 1961, Meriwest Credit Union, one of Silicon Valley’s largest and most established financial institutions, provides proactive, personal, convenient, and innovative financial services to over 80,000 families and businesses throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Pima County, Arizona. Meriwest, with assets of nearly $2.2 billion, offers a wide array of personal banking, business services, and wealth advisory products and services to members. The credit union was voted one of the ‘Best Credit Unions in Silicon Valley’ in the MercuryNews’ Annual ‘Readers’ Choice Awards’ and a “Best Place to Work” by the Silicon Valley Business Journal 2020through 2024. More information can be found at www.meriwest.com.
