SAN DIEGO-For nearly all CUs the second-half forecast will look similar to the first half's: find ways to reduce operating expenses and improve efficiency ratios by evaluating their IT systems.
Symitar Marketing Manager John San Filippo noted that while certain areas of the credit union's operations, such as mortgage lending, have a great capacity to impact the bottom line, the efforts of all the other credit union's departments, in total, have the biggest effect.
"The income or operational savings may be smaller in some areas, but when added up they are significant," pointed out San Filippo. "And the IT system touches every department."
San Filippo recommended evaluating the IT system to ensure it is automating as many processes as possible, notingeven the smallest improvements one IT system might offer over another leads to solid savings.
"For example, if we randomly picked a billion-dollar credit union that was not our customer, considered their income and interest expenses are constant, and improved their efficiency ratio by .025 basis points, that would work out to an $80,000 per month difference. Say a half a billion CU, and the savings are $40,000 a month-that's still a lot of money."
San Filippo said that Symitar evaluated NCUA 2009 year-end data and learned that CUs using Symitar's Episys system, on average, had better efficiency ratios than non-users.
