Increasing Online Conversion From 5% to 50% With Digital Account Opening

By Rachel Lauren, COO, Debbie

Is your digital account opening good enough? The #1 goal for credit unions in 2025 is to grow their membership, especially amongst younger members. However, if your digital account opening (DAO) experience is the very first touchpoint they have with your credit union, and that experience isn’t super-smooth and seamless, you’ve now ruined your chances of reaching that goal. On average, only 15% of people who start an application today with a credit union finish it. Add all the people that get denied, and your conversion rate is abysmal.

Author’s Note: If you are currently in the process of considering a new digital account opening provider, we’d love to understand your current challenges and criteria. As a neutral third party, we are putting together an objective guide on the best digital account opening providers. Complete our survey and receive the full report when it’s ready: Start Survey

Your digital account opening provider is probably one of the most important choices you will make, so try this exercise: test out your own digital account opening process – if it takes you more than seven minutes to get to the funding stage, you’re in trouble.

If it takes more than four minutes but less than seven, you’re in the middle of the pack. But to be best in class, you want to be hitting three minutes or less. Now go and test out the account opening experience of several other credit unions you admire and compare. As a member growth platform, Debbie cares a lot about whether the leads we send to credit unions convert when they get to their page. The credit unions we work with who utilize a best-in-class DAO platform see a 50-60% conversion rate, as opposed to the numbers referenced above.

Here are a few things that will get you to your goal:

1. Pre-filled data. Many of the new DAO providers will have technology to pull information about a prospective member with just a phone number or SSN, with no need for manual data entry.
2. Seamless KYC/AML. The best KYC/AML technology is able to run checks on the background by combining a myriad of different data sources, with just the right amount of friction on the front end.
3. One step at a time. The best forms ask one question at a time - this makes the forms easier to digest and feel much quicker and smoother.
4. Make membership eligibility simple. Offering a prospective member a plethora of different eligibility options can confuse them. Instead, utilize key data points (their zip code, their employer data, or education), to check their eligibility yourself. Take the mental load away from the prospective member.

Because our goal is to drive member growth and loyalty to our partners, we often get asked by our credit union partners which DAO providers we prefer to work with to improve their application conversion rates. Because this is such an important decision, we are compiling a list of some of the leading providers to help you make that choice. The rankings will be informed by our own personal user experience and testing, as well as interviews with credit union execs who have gone through the process of choosing and implementing with each of these providers. See author’s note below for how you can participate in the survey.

Good luck on your DAO journey!