New System Flies at American Airlines CU

The largest credit union in Texas, American Airlines Federal Credit Union (AAFCU), has implemented Digital Insight's Axis Internet banking and bill payment system to provide enhanced online services to its membership.

AAFCU members-including pilots, stewardesses, food service workers, and other employees of AMR Corp. and its previous holdings-understand the value of being able to manage money from a laptop in a hotel room. Providing an improved online experience to these globetrotting members was a key goal of AAFCU's conversion to Digital Insight's system, which went live in November.

In addition to basic Internet banking and bill pay, Digital Insight's hosted solution for AAFCU offers check images, statement images, and targeted marketing-all new offerings for the credit union. With the new system, AAFCU will also be offering live transactions (replacing the previous batch method), changing its bill payment system from a good funds model to a risk-based model, and providing links to a live chat on every page of the site.

"We were looking for new features and functionality," said Carol Brown, VP of member and lending services at AAFCU. "It became apparent that Digital Insight could provide a wide scope of products."

The bill payment service continues to be handled by Atlanta-based CheckFree. A major component of AAFCU's conversion to Digital Insight's system involved extracting bill payment information from the previous CheckFree account and populating the new Digital Insight-CheckFree account with that information. AAFCU did not want its members to have to re-key their information. "We wanted the migration to be as seamless as possible, and it was," said Brown.

Approximately 11,000 of AAFCU's 202,000 members have signed up for the new Digital Insight Internet banking service. The credit union is planning a marketing push to enroll new members, and is seeing approximately 150 to 200 new enrollments each day. "We have a lot of growth potential here," said Brown.

In general, members find that the new system is easier to use and navigate.

"The ease of use has increased dramatically," said Chris Young, CU Access system administrator. "The live aspect of it is a hit. Members love it, and we love it."

Founded six years ago, Digital Insight sees itself not simply as an ASP, but also as a partner with its clients.

"We try to take a partner attitude," said Dale Walker, president and chief operating officer at Calabasas, Calif.-based Digital Insight. "We're a partner that goes out of our way to be of help to our clients."

AAFCU is happy with its choice. "The reason why I think partnering with Digital Insight is a good decision is that we see them spending research and development money to bring features and services to our members in the future," said Brown. "Our members will be glad to see the system improve over time."