Robbie over at The Life and Times of a Credit Union Employee blog points to the Callahan & Associates study we’ve been anticipating that covers online-only high-yield accounts.

From the press release:

Credit unions cannot afford to ignore this threat to their online member segment. This research identified a group of online members who are a highly attractive segment – not only do they prefer self-service, but they also already have significant relationships with their credit union. These members are already using more services than the frequent branch user segment, which may justify further investments in services or higher yield accounts to maintain their loyalty. The question is how to reward and retain this segment?

The answer seems pretty clear to me: offer a high-yield online-only product.

Just so you know how I feel about the topic, I covered ING Direct’s rumored paperless checking account here and the growing customer base for online-only banks here.

What are some of the online institutions up to? Well, they just keep raising their rates. Yesterday Matt sent me a link to a BeancounterBlog.com post on HSBC Direct’s rate increase to 4.8%.

Don’t ignore your competition that lives online instead of in branches, folks. 19% of your online members with annual incomes over $100k are already using them, or so the study says.