By Roy Urrico
There are six main areas where many credit unions require additional support and improvement, according to business process outsourcing (BPO) company Integrated Financial Technologies (IFT), as observed in its operational assessment projects.
As part of the Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada-based BPO services portfolio, IFT conducted many comprehensive operational assessments for credit unions over the last two years looking to maximize productivity. IFT’s experts review a credit union’s business processes, workflows, procedures, and infrastructure to help evaluate the institution’s operations. IFT then offers a series of suggestions that credit unions can use to enhance and optimize workflows and processes.
The assessments and projects conducted for credit unions by IFT have revealed the top issues these organizations face. The evaluations were conducted for large, mid-size, and small credit unions across the U.S. and Canada.
The findings include:
Reliance on legacy systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM), loan management, or workforce management platforms.
Dependence upon on-premise infrastructures.
Designation of individuals as a single point of information.
Inefficiency in cross-selling products and services.
Siloed departments.
Lack of procedural documentation
“Most of the credit unions we visit are thriving organizations with effective practices, but there is always room for enhancement at the corporate level. This can be difficult for in-house personnel to assess, since they are too immersed in the ongoing management of the company,” said Tod Chisholm, president at IFT. “We typically go on to offer business process services for about 75% of the credit unions we assess.”
Breaking Down the Credit Union Issues
According to IFT, credit union areas that require additional support and improvement based on their operational assessments include:
Use of legacy technology. Many credit unions rely on networking systems and applications that are outdated, patched, and updated over time. This creates complicated environments difficult to manage, and similarly difficult to upgrade, due to this ongoing “technical debt.” In addition, a percentage of credit unions still depend on Microsoft Excel files and manual data input as opposed to tailored, automated technology systems for loan management and data processing.
Adequate security and cloud-based storage. IFT observed a surprising amount of credit unions utilizing on-premise storage systems, such as on-site server closets that house much of their data and CRM records. In contrast, cloud-based systems offer increased security and redundancy, often delivering automated backup and failover systems to protect against downtime and data loss in the case of an outage or disaster.
Assigning personnel as a single point of information. Many organizations select a limited number of executives to hold a great degree of responsibility and internal company knowledge, positioning them as single points of information. That approach creates risk, since if that single point person leaves the organization, a large portion of corporate knowledge and culture goes with them, leaving the rest of the team in a lurch. Ideally, company knowledge should be accessible to a broad circle of personnel.
An inability to cross-sell services. Although certainly skilled in the elements of lending and banking, most credit unions need marketing expertise that will help them cross-market their products and services — a talent that can significantly grow their business. For example, credit unions should develop sales campaigns that target members who hold home loans, offering those members a personal loan for furniture, a second car, or a boat.
Siloed communications. Even at smaller credit unions, individual departments use disparate technologies and proprietary processes. The inability to freely communicate and share information via common platforms and procedures between departments impacts productivity.
A lack of companywide documentation. Even the majority of credit unions with organized, companywide processes typically do not document business procedures in any concrete way. Visibility and communication of workflows, member engagement policies, company-wide personnel policies, job descriptions, and security policies need availability in a format accessible to the entire organization. This helps to create consistency and equity throughout the credit union, giving everyone fair access to policies, rules, best practices, and information.
Post Assessment Process
As part of its post-assessment services, IFT revealed they provide a general procedural manual specifically for credit unions, which can be tailored to the policies and business processes of individual organizations. The manual offers a variety of best practices and exemplary procedures that IFT has developed based on deep knowledge of credit union operations.
In addition, IFT said it provides a team of “smartsourcing” agents to augment in-house teams and seamlessly provide additional departmental support. Its agents also utilize a state-of-the-art IFT Ignite management platform to conduct tasks and execute lending procedures.