SC Telco FCU Testimonial

It is safe to say that loans are what keep credit unions in business. If lending is the heart of the credit union, then credit decisioning tools are the major arteries. In the hyper-competitive world of online lending, credit union members no longer have the patience to wait hours, much less days, for their personal, auto or home equity loan to get approved. Greenville, SC-based SC Telco Federal Credit Union (SC Telco) is one forward looking credit union that is a big proponent of online lending and decisioning. In order to serve their nearly 30,000 members more quickly and efficiently, they turned to a company with ten years of industry-leading experience providing credit technology solutions: SerTech.

SC Telco was already working with another big name in online lending and SerTech partner - CUNA Mutual's Loanliner.com system - when they decided to add another level of effectiveness to their lending operations by incorporating an automated decision engine. Not wanting to rush into such an important decision without first performing due diligence, the credit union did their homework and made sure that the right people were involved in the selection process. Their project team included a branch manager, loan officer, a representative from the call center area and Scott Weaver, Vice President of Member Service.

Scott recalls that "after reviewing at all of our criteria, SerTech's CODA (Credit Online Decisioning Agent) was the best fit." The credit union's project team, including CEO Steve Harkins, demoed the CODA application twice and checked the numbers to make sure that it was within their budget. Scott explains "we felt like we had greater flexibility with CODA than with other systems, and it was well within our budget." He also made the effort to call references and was pleased to discover that "all of them were very happy with SerTech."

Once CODA was chosen as the preferred solution, both SC Telco and SerTech got down to the business of system testing and implementation. The credit union sent their lending policies and procedures over to SerTech's highly experienced project managers so that they could configure a baseline to work from. The configuration changes and fine-tuning went back and forth, interspersed with extensive system testing. "We were all very thorough because we wanted to get it right from the start," emphasizes Scott. They also wanted to leverage SerTech's decade of experience working with credit unions and their understanding of their clients' best practices. Scott notes that "we relied on them to advise on what other credit union had done and this was very helpful for us."

Every credit union is different in their approach to approving loans and SC Telco preferred to have their risk-based system be a bit on the conservative side. Even with this approach, they have experienced excellent results: their online loan applications have quadrupled and their approval rate has gone from around 20% to about 50%. Scott points out that "we have received more business since we introduced CODA and it is a better quality of loan too." SC Telco also gets more value from the system because their Member Service Representatives utilize the system when they are working with a member over the phone or in person. Finally, the credit union is enjoying back office improvements; according to Scott: "with the automatic download into our core system we can book a loan in about 10 minutes, where before it could take up to 45 minutes."

To keep a sophisticated decisioning system such as CODA up and running takes ongoing reviews and technical support. Fortunately for SC Telco, SerTech provides both as part of their relationship. CODA Analytics permits SC Telco to analyze the metrics of loan applications processed through their custom CODA decision engine. Scott says that "it has worked out really well for us have SerTech help analyze our loan history, closed deals, rejected applications and approval ratios." As for technical support, Scott and his team have received "excellent tech support - they are very responsive and reliable."

With state-of-the-art lending technology, backed by knowledgeable quarterly reviews and top notch technical support, it is no wonder that SC Telco Federal Credit Union is pleased with their partnership with SerTech. Scott summarizes it well when says that "CODA works well for us, it delivers good results quickly for our members, and we are quite happy with it."