In response to my post last week about online archives (here and here), I heard from Citibank and WaMu, who both support online requests for statements going back seven years (see note 1). The statements are delivered online, free of charge, and in WaMu's case, generally within five minutes. The customer receives an email notification when the statement is available. That's slightly less convenient than real-time access, but it still provides 98% of the value (see note 2), which is quite acceptable.

But the new winner, with the longest online archives, is San Jose-based Technology CU which provides free online access to statements going back to 1993. That's 14 years and counting. Tech CU also requires an online request for the back statements, but with the archives hosted in-house, they are readable within seconds. In response to my question, SVP Michael Luckin timed the query for me, and was able to login, request and receive an older statement, and logout in 20 seconds. That ought to satisfy most members.    

Notes:

1. The Citibank archives were included in our previous summer 2005 report, but at that time we did not know of WaMu's expanded archives which became available in March 2005, but were evidently not discussed on its website when we did our research.

2. None of the statement archive systems mentioned here allow the customer to search for specific transactions or to manipulate/download the actual data. Only Whitney Bank offers seven years of searchable online data.