LOS ANGELES - Richard Nelson is proud of what his two-person IT department has done for the $49-million Cityside FCU here, especially since small CUs have few resources and tend to “hide technology in the basement,” he said.
“Many small credit unions look at technology as a necessary evil, instead of as a strategic instrument that can help expand membership and grow profits,” said Nelson, the director of IT at Cityside.
Technology has helped Cityside look like a large financial institution, he continued.
“I’m proud that, to the outside world, we look like the big guys,” Nelson said. The CU offers Internet banking, electronic bill payment, telephone banking and a call center around the clock, online membership applications, online lending with instant decisioning and shared branching.
The core system is run in-house, and unlike business continuity at many small CUs, the Cityside infrastructure boasts redundant Internet Service Provider failover for its ATM, homebanking, e-mail and shared branching network–and both tape and online backups for servers, Nelson said.
Beyond that, a plasma screen in Cityside’s single branch helps market “the flavor of the day, week, or month to members,” said Nelson.
“I’m proud that we do all of this with just two people in IT,” he added.
On the flip side, the dynamic duo struggles to conquer necessary compliance. They are also responsible for all department oversight.
“We’re expected to know everything without any training,” said Nelson.
“We can’t afford a compliance officer or a solution that would automate compliance,” said Nelson. “And we can’t afford to pay for training”–although Cityside moved to a UNIX system for core processing two years ago, Nelson still isn’t certified to work with UNIX, he said.
Indeed, cost prevents Cityside from doing a lot, Nelson continued. E-statements are cost prohibitive, he said. Cost keeps Cityside from fully automating the online membership application process–once an application is submitted, the process reverts to manual data entry and authentication.
Vendors won’t give Cityside a break, either, said Nelson. “We’re teetering between being a small-sized and a mid-sized credit union, where nobody will assist us and we end up paying the same price as a $150-million CU.”
Add to that the internal mandate to spend less on IT this year. To do so, Nelson is looking at moving his core processor to a hosted environment and eliminating tape backups.
There’s no easy answer to the small CU technology conundrum, Nelson said. “It’s all about overcoming cost.”
A measure of help may come in the form of an external auditing firm, which Cityside recently hired to revamp IT policies and procedures. That may make compliance more efficient, said Nelson.
Asked if Cityside had considered teaming up with other credit unions as part of a technology CUSO (see related story, page 20), Nelson said “I don’t even know where to start looking, but I do know a few IT managers and CEOs that are our size and are struggling with similar issues.”
Though small may not always be pretty, it does help keep Cityside “nimble,” said Nelson. “We don’t have the overhead generated by oversight committees or by too many levels of management. And when we moved our data center last year, I was the project manager. It wasn’t like there were too many chiefs and not enough Indians.”
MORE
Read more about small CU tech at cujournal.com and search the following bolded terms in the archive:
Small CUs, Big Problem: NCUA Works To Bring IT To Computerless CUs
AYSOS? NVM the F2F, TXT MSG Banking Deployed By 2 CUs To Target Teens
How Small CUs Are Sitting Ducks
Pearl Of Wisdom Helps Small CUs Report Like Big CUs
How One CU Boosted Online Banking By Beefing Up Security
MySpace.com: The Factious Frontier
Video Conferencing Used To Bring Together Staff In 3 Remote Offices
For info: www.citysidefcu.org
