An Interesting Pattern

We got a call recently from someone who introduced himself as a private investor, who asked for a list of our bank customers. We referred him to our Web site where some are listed and asked why he was asking, and what he said we found very interesting. Apparently, when mutual banks go public, any account holders get preference in buying into the IPO. I remember this from my time living in London in the late 90's when it seemed like nearly the whole mutual savings industry converted to a public company structure, one bank at a time, and there was sort of a craze going on with people opening accounts at lots of banks in hopes they could participate in the IPOs.

Anyway, according to him, he has been doing the same thing here in the U.S. and found that there's a high degree of correlation between those banks who go public and those banks who use Andera for account opening. He says he knows because he has opened accounts online at many of them, and was pleased that he didn't have to travel any more to conduct his business. So, apparently he was asking for a list of our customers since he thought that would be an indicator of future IPOs.

Of course, I have no idea if this is true and am just relaying an anecdote. But I thought it was an interesting correlation that, if true, would demonstrate what we have always believed to be a higher degree of progressiveness among our customer base.