ONTARIO, Calif.–A newly entrenched piece of conventional wisdom–that COVID-19 has led members to embrace e-channels and made branches obsolete–is being challenged by at least two credit unions that are saying foot traffic is quickly approaching pre-COVID levels.
Speaking to a session of the California and Nevada Credit Union Leagues’ REACH Conference Michelle Hunter of CU SoCal in Whittier, Calif., said she had read an article in which consumers were polled and 31% said they were not planning to go back to traditional banking and would instead stick to the digital channel.
“We saw that big shift in the first three months,” said Hunter. “But I have to say over the last three months or so we are really starting to see our number normal out. Our digital channel penetration is probably up about 10%, but our foot traffic branches is back up to about 90% of where we were pre-COVID. We didn’t see a huge number of new activated digital banking users, but we have seen those who were enrolled are using it more actively.”
Royce Ngiam of Partners FCU in Burbank, Calif., said his credit union is seeing the same pattern.
“We have actually had more people come into the branches today than we did pre-COVID,” he said.