Deluxe Corp., a longtime leader in check printing, has announcedthe rollout of SwitchAgent, a tool set designed to help consumerseasily switch from one financial institution to another.

SwitchAgent is offered by Minnesota-based Deluxe directly to financial institutions, at prices Deluxevice president Petro Tsarehradsky declined to reveal in aninterview.

The selling proposition for Switch Agent is that in an age ofelectronic payments and bill pay many consumers may sign up for anew account but their transition process stalls as they becomeoverwhelmed with the challenges of keying in so much data anew.

SwitchAgent is intended to largely automate the process for theconsumer.

“Using SwitchAgent, people can make a switch in 30 minutes orless, instead of hours or days, and this is the first end-to-endsolution that will help financial institutions better serve theircustomers and increase the likelihood of converting a greaterpercentage of new accounts into multiple service customers,” saidJohn Filby, a senior vice president for Deluxe Corp., in a preparedstatement.

Tsarehradsky elaborated that in tests Deluxe “found a 20%reduction in inactive accounts when SwitchAgent helped bring newaccounts on board.”

Tsarehradsky indicated that SunTrust, a $178 billion institutionwith branches in the southern U.S., has pioneered implementation ofSwitchAgent.

Earlier this year, Credit Union Times reported that Texas Trust Credit Union, a $753 millioninstitution based in Mansfield, Texas, had implemented theSwitchAgent service.