eBilling & eStatement Analyst Insights: 2007 to 2008

eBilling eStatement Analyst Insights: 2007 to 2008

According to a September 2008 Forrester analysis, 70% of online consumers are willing to replace paper bills and statements. While customers are willing to go paperless, Forrester believes they will not take the initiative to eliminate paper. Customers have had the option to turn off paper for several years now. Few do. Customers have shown that they are ready to abandon paper. They just need a push.
Source - Forrester's North American Technographics(R) Financial Services Online Survey, Q2 2008

Trends in online banking
Between 85% and 94% of US banking eStatement adopters still receive paper statements

Forrester research found that more than 55% of online checking, savings, and credit card customers are now receiving eStatements - an increase of almost 15% from 2006.

They noted, however, that most consumers still get paper statements, and that much of the growth in adoption has come from users receiving both online and paper statements, with fewer than one in five online customers completely abandoning paper.

Trends in electronic bill and statement presentment
Growing volumes of transactional mail

"Secure electronic delivery of statements, bills and documents by leveraging the familiarity of email, is becoming a key capability in today's leading financial institutions.
Source: Rodney Nelsestuen, Tower Group, October 2008

"While email bill presentation has been around for a while, it was pushed to the back burner in the rush to deliver EBPP via the web. However, it's getting another chance thanks to several vendors that have found clever ways to deliver email bills and offer secure payment options without the need to log-into a web site? This is easier for many customers and often speeds up payment of the bill. Companies are taking a second look at this option, especially as web-based EBPP adoption rates stall."
The Ascent Group, 2008

The volumes of transactional mail sent and received - reported in the United States Postal Service Household Diary Survey for Fiscal Year 2007 - corroborate analyst findings, indicating that adoption of online bill and statement presentment is not translating into paper turn off.

Between 2005 and 2007, the number of confirmations, statement presentments and bills being sent by mail increased 1.3: In comparison, there was a 20.2% decrease in non transactional business to household mail over the same time period.

• In 2007, US households received 18.8 billion bills by mail, up from 18.7 billion in 2005. Bills now account for 43.4% of the total volume of transactions mail.
• Statements sent by mail increased 8.2% and now account for 6.5% of the total volume of business mail. In 2007, U.S. households received 6.5 billion statements just from financial institutions. In 2005, that figure was 5.9 billion.

Trends in online payments
15% of bills now paid via the internet

The Postal Service survey confirms a widely publicized increase in online payments, reporting that 30% of US households now pay at least one bill a month via the internet.

However, the survey cautions that the actual number of bills being paid via the internet is still quite small - only 15%. Over the past five years, the percentage of bills paid by mail has dropped from 74% to 62%, but households still pay a majority of their bills- 62 percent - by mail.