Doing the weekly grocery shopping has previously found us at the local major grocery store. But recently, we have been checking out other options available for grabbing meals for the week. Of course there’s your standard retail grocery experience: aisles upon aisles of produce, snacks, drinks, and more. And there’s your local baker or specialty store: doing one or a few things, and doing them better than most close-by. And then there’s this new third option: a combination of everything attractive about a regular retail grocer paired with a specialty store, and also includes a café or small restaurant with grab-and-go options. This third option is interesting in that it seems to be the most generic representation of every option, and yet, when shopping here, we feel as though this experience was created just for us. In CUSO lending, how do we adapt to this new standard of perfect-for-all convenience, while delivering a bespoke experience for members and their borrowers?
Lending: Many to Many? Or is it One to One?
Putting Lending Product Marketing on Display at Scale
Credit Union Service Organizations manage lending products for dozens and oftentimes hundreds of credit unions.This puts CUSOs in a great position to guide members through a wide variety of product experiences with options available at scale while maintaining low operating costs for your customers. Offering packaged lending products for small markets and bespoke services at scale is a great way for CUSOs to provide immediate value to customers. Each product with basic, advanced, and configurable options means a good fit every time.
This value can translate to increased loan revenue, reduced costs, more applications and better overall experiences for your customers and their members.
A recent article from Credit Union Times explores the idea that this bespoke lending product marketing style is and should be available to lenders of all sizes:
“By combining marketing automation with [business intelligence], institutions can take full advantage of all of the customer/member data they possess in their core system, their lending systems and from external sources, such as credit reports they have purchased during the sale of other products.”
Making this data available to CUSOs and the members means that packaged and scaled lending products can continue to feel customized and catered to each individual branch and borrower.
The FNI Blueprint Loan Origination Software, paired with the intelligence of FNI DecisionCore provides an automated approach to bespoke lending product marketing and cross-selling, ideal for Credit Union Service Organizations to launch at scale in a many-to-many environment while all retaining a local and personal feel.
Here’s Your Change
Billing: an Often Overlooked CUSO Lending Optimization
In finance, the front office and back office often don’t easily talk. Since back office operations aren’t commonly seen by customers or even member credit unions, the technology and processes tend to be more dated and less shiny than the customer facing front office tools and experiences. If this sounds like something you’ve experienced, it’s probably caused a few headaches. The antidote to these headaches is to integrate back office tools directly into your front office operations. Whether CUSO members and their borrowers can see it or not, the back office is a major part of their experience and can make a big impression, good or bad. And while integrating older billing platforms with newer tech might sound like a daunting task, working with a knowledgeable product & workflow orchestration partner can turn this into a walk in the park.
Now that two key parts of your CUSO are talking (and we won’t even get into the benefits of integrating marketing and other departments just yet), you’re set up for offering a streamlined product set to members, with an integrated billing system that all teams will be thankful for. But let’s think beyond this integration. Now that billing and CUSO lending products are talking, a whole world of opportunities to build better, efficient processes is opened up.
Imagine if your Decision platform could automatically calculate member billing, or send key metrics to your other systems. Imagine your employees more focused on strategies, finding revenue opportunities, and maybe even enjoying a warm cup of coffee.
Can I See Some ID?
CUSO Lending and Fraud Mitigation
Providing mobile and digital first lending products has never been easier. But the more we take away personal interaction, the more we are at risk for fraud, right? Well, we don’t have to be. Removing risk through automated fraud reduction and identity verification integrations makes lending easy.. When your lending platform is inherently capable of risk mitigation, buying off the shelf from you (vs. building on your own) becomes a clear choice.
Aside from implementing powerful fraud protection tools and tactics, the team at FNI helps CUSOs understand how to talk about, sell, and package these products to CUSO members.
More and more independent credit unions seem to be searching for value, and specifically digital-based value to provide to their customers. That’s where a well-managed CUSO comes in. Outsourcing complex technologies is on-trend for these organizations that do not otherwise have the means or staff to support platforms (or other tech) in-house. As a CUSO, value is inherent in understanding the ins-and-outs of a single or multi-branch credit union, and providing tools to optimize these processes in both digital and traditional capacities.
Just like our bespoke shopping experience, this new world where expectations are “great-at-everything,” extends to loan products. Defining product sets, connecting departments, mitigating risks, and protecting from fraud, are a handful of important factors to consider when creating a competitive and catered experience for CUSO members and their customers.
While we keep an eye on what’s coming next, and continue to stay educated and prepared to push the fintech industry forward, the loan origination software experts at FNI will keep providing insights and, of course, providing hands-on and high-level service to our loan origination platform partners. If you’re ready for direct access to decision strategy management and more, talk to a loan origination expert.
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