April 2014: Online Statements and eDelivery

Every firm provides online statements; the difference is in the details. At this point, almost every small business card issuer in our coverage group offers PDF statement downloads on their private sites. For almost all firms, these PDFs are true-to-form, with the design and content matching the hardcopy statements that are typically mailed to card holders each month. This Small Business Card Monitor Report looks at the options and capabilities provided by each issuer in their private site Statements Center, including the length of statement archives, the types of downloads facilitated and the ease of locating statements. Specifically, we took the following into consideration:

• Accessibility and Usability of Statement Center
• Types of Online Statements
• Paperless Statement Capabilities

Despite the importance of statements to the private site user experience, only two firms in our report offer a top-level navigational option for statements. All other firms offer their Statements Center within a sub-menu or flyout tab. Notably, one firm fails to even do that, and instead limits access to the Statements Center to quicklinks positioned throughout the private site, with several included on the private site homepage.
 
Within their various Statement Centers, issuers offer between six months and 48 months of immediately available statements. Two firms enable clients to view up to seven years of statement PDFs if they switch to paperless statements. Another firm provides clients with access to 72 months of statement PDFs online after suppressing their paper statements.
 
To help complete the online statement experience, some issuers make statement inserts available online as well. This is not the case for a majority of firms, however, with only a handful of card companies offering insert images or information on their sites. Three firms offer inserts online, and two of them provide links to inserts directly next to their listed online statements.
 
Beyond these basics, firms vary in how they are currently marketing paperless statements. For instance, only a small handful of issuers have private site ads, and no firms are currently providing any incentives. They also vary in how they display information from the backs of hardcopy statements, and whether they allow clients to request back statements. For this last option, two firms lead the way, facilitating fee-free private site uploads of back statements in PDFs.
 
In terms of hardcopy ordering tools, only half of SBCM firms offer one. Two firms allow clients to order statements dating back seven years, while two others give their clients access to six.