ORCC Ready to Spread its Wings, says Lawlor

NEW ORLEANS – Not to take anything away from its competitors, but Online Resources Chairman and CEO Matt Lawlor said ORCC is positioned better than any Net banking and bill payment firm to utilize CRM to boost online penetration rates. ORCC’s financial clients already boast about a 28% adoption rate for bill payment, that compares to a 12% industry-wide average. The McLean, Va.-based company serves about 550 financials, 60% of which are credit unions. Interestingly, most of its client credit unions charge their members between $4.95 and $5.95 a month for online bill payment. This flies in the face of a current industry trend of giving away bill payment for free. Lawlor said ORCC’s major advantage right now is its CRM prowess. The company actively markets to credit union members based on information from the credit union and just as part of welcoming new online members. “We see someone sign up for a share draft account and at that point the credit union gets their e-mail. If we see they haven’t logged on to online banking, we will initiate an outbound call cross-selling bill payment and online banking,” said Lawlor. When the company was first founded, Lawlor said one thing they thought they would never do is talk directly with members, not wanting to trump the CU’s relationship. However, Lawlor said there are some CU CEOs out there who have inspired them to have such quality member service, that now they thrive on it. “They say `if you’re talking to our members, you better be good.’ We took that seriously. Now we believe we can be an asset in helping them cross-sell that they should want us talking to members,” said Lawlor. Lawlor said the company’s new MoneyHQ suite of products is going to give CUs even more cross-selling features. MoneyHQ combines all online elements, including online banking, bill payment, money transfer and account aggregation. Lawlor said CUs can view foreign account information via the aggregation component to get a better view of their members and market accordingly. There have been two dramatic developments in the online bill pay world in the last 18 months that is going to deepen national penetration, said Lawlor. The most important is that new studies prove that consumers that utilize bill pay at their institution have 30-40% higher balances than those that don’t. “At last we have that proof. That’s why we’re seeing more people give away bill pay. They make the money back on deposits.” The second change is it’s clear now that consumers are just much more amenable to the concept of banking online. The security fears have waned and it’s no longer a cutting edge technology that consumers are nervous about utilizing. Currently about 65% of ORCC’s bill payments are sent electronically. Lawlor said in metropolitan areas it’s about 73%. Now that the company is profitable, Lawlor believes ORCC is ready to `spread its wings’ and get more clients, mostly because of its CRM prowess. ORCC has 300 employees, $40 million in recurring revenue and $8 million in cash flow. -