New look for Canadian Western Bank | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

Central1 is working on their new platform called Forge and has a rather (imo) ambitious goal to have everyone moved over to it by 2021 so they can then sunset MemberDirect. As a result I'd expect a lot of credit unions and others to have new (and hopefully) better online and mobile banking over the next 2 years.

Doug said

Yes, I'm not sure they will make that goal, though. That's less than 2 years away and I don't think any credit union has fully moved over to it yet. Alterna Bank and Alterna Savings are two of those championing it. Meanwhile, though, there are competing online banking systems being put forth by various fintechs, Fiserv, and others, so it's quite likely you may see some credit unions - unhappy with Forge - increasingly adopt a new online banking platform independent of Central 1. In this way, we may see more divergence. Coast is one of those I could see moving away from MemberDirect/Forge due to the fact that they've already separated from Central 1 in terms of core banking system, online account opening system, and have withdrawn their shares in Central 1 following federal continuance.

It will be interesting, but I would say that Meridian/Motus are likely to continue with Forge post-MemberDirect.

Cheers,
Doug  

I hope to god that the new online banking platform isn't an awful modern "upgrade" like so many redesigns are today. I hate the big button look, where every mundane task takes up the entire screen (bill payments with Tangerine) or where basic features are missing (PC Financial and their lack of Quicken support). Say what you will about MemberDirect, it's functional. I will admit its an ugly website but it has so many features. You can export your transactions to pretty much any format and there's plenty of ways to filter your transactions. Plus it's actually designed for the desktop, so the buttons aren't overly large. There's not too much whitespace, and you can actually pay multiple bills at the same time from the same screen.

I'd love to see an upgrade to MemberDirect but it has to be a real upgrade.

jacnel said

I hope to god that the new online banking platform isn't an awful modern "upgrade" like so many redesigns are today. I hate the big button look, where every mundane task takes up the entire screen (bill payments with Tangerine) or where basic features are missing (PC Financial and their lack of Quicken support). Say what you will about MemberDirect, it's functional. I will admit its an ugly website but it has so many features. You can export your transactions to pretty much any format and there's plenty of ways to filter your transactions. Plus it's actually designed for the desktop, so the buttons aren't overly large. There's not too much whitespace, and you can actually pay multiple bills at the same time from the same screen.

I'd love to see an upgrade to MemberDirect but it has to be a real upgrade.  

Totally agree. I still cannot get alert notifications set up on the new "improved" PC Elite Mastercard site. Keep getting that "Oops an error has occured" message. Phoned in several times and told to try an alternate browser etc but nothing works. Anyone else have this issue?