SAN ANTONIO-When times are tough, collections get even tougher, making it all the more impressive that San Antonio FCU was able to shave 77 hours a month and save $35,000 in payroll by beefing up its collections efforts.
Before changing to an automated process, San Antonio Federal Credit Union dedicated eight staff members to examine delinquent accounts, review charge-offs and report them to the appropriate agencies and make collection calls to try and recoup some of the losses. But because of the system's inefficiencies, the credit union was rarely able to succeed on any collections.
"We were constantly behind on charge-offs. We had a lot of human error [and] we weren't able to collect on many of those charge-offs," said Melissa Zahn, vice president of information services.
"It was a manual process that took three people a long time to do it. It was a full time job for them charging off accounts," added Maria Trevino, assistant vice president of collections. "They'd have to review each account individually to see what kind of a charge off it was, that sort of thing."
More troubling than the lack of time and funds recouped in the collections process was the human error that caused major consistency issues. With multiple individuals reporting charge-offs to the appropriate regulators and agencies, the system was rife with reporting errors.
Beginning in August 2007, SACU programmers began to work with Symitar's PowerOn customization solution to craft an automated charge-off system. It took about 120 hours for programmers to put together the scripts to build an automated charge-off and reporting system into their Episys core solution. But SACU recovered that cost in less than two months as the automation saved the credit union 77 hours a month and pared back $35,000 in payroll and now the credit union has come into better compliance, increased collections and reduced the number of staffers it needs for both reporting and collecting.
"We now have one person that verifies then nightly charge off report," said senior programmer Brenda Farley.
Each night the program charges off negative accounts after 44 days of no activity and another program transmits data exacts to eFunds and Telecheck every week. The new system also completely automates fraud checking, changing debit card status, account warnings, collection reports, expiring lines of credit and disabling home banking.
Charge-off automation is a no-brainer for credit unions these days, Zahn noted, because many agencies are requiring it now. It also makes the entire process easier to understand, as staffers no longer have to dig through big stacks of paperwork and rifle through individual member files to figure out where the institution stands. Now all SACU employees have to do is look at each day's summary chart, which is once again, produced without a single keystroke by a staffer.
Symitar marketing manager John San Filippo said his firm nominated SACU because of its creativity in using PowerOn, which in the past has included constructing a checking rewards program out of whole cloth in about thirty minutes.
"They are taking the technology that is available rather than spending money on a third party product," he said. "They did it for free because the tools are all there in the core system."
BEST PRACTICES
San Antonio FCU, Texas
Category: Collections Automation
Provider: Symitar
