When it comes to credit union personal loans, technology is key.
In banks and credit unions across the country, legacy consumer lending platforms are running their course. They can no longer support innovative and evolving needs in the credit union personal loan, home loan, and automotive loan arenas. After supporting and enhancing their homegrown legacy application for decades, the nation’s largest credit union hit a wall. They needed to scale their growing $40 billion consumer lending portfolio business and their platform could not support the level of change they wanted to achieve.
With the emergence of fintech disruptors and competitors delivering consumer lending experiences that echo the speed, simplicity, and convenience of Apple Card and TrueCar experiences, the credit union knew their antiquation and growing technical debt would lead their members to seek streamlined experiences and more expeditious funding elsewhere.
With such a consequential investment on the line, the credit union reached out to Celerity to help them transition a digital laggard to a leader and innovator amongst their competitors. Knowing their enterprise technology was not flexible enough to add additional lending products and the innovations sought by leadership, the Celerity team was asked to do a technical assessment and provide a business case for replacing their legacy consumer loan origination system.
When it comes to credit union personal loans, technology is key.
In banks and credit unions across the country, legacy consumer lending platforms are running their course. They can no longer support innovative and evolving needs in the credit union personal loan, home loan, and automotive loan arenas. After supporting and enhancing their homegrown legacy application for decades, the nation’s largest credit union hit a wall. They needed to scale their growing $40 billion consumer lending portfolio business and their platform could not support the level of change they wanted to achieve.
With the emergence of fintech disruptors and competitors delivering consumer lending experiences that echo the speed, simplicity, and convenience of Apple Card and TrueCar experiences, the credit union knew their antiquation and growing technical debt would lead their members to seek streamlined experiences and more expeditious funding elsewhere.
With such a consequential investment on the line, the credit union reached out to Celerity to help them transition a digital laggard to a leader and innovator amongst their competitors. Knowing their enterprise technology was not flexible enough to add additional lending products and the innovations sought by leadership, the Celerity team was asked to do a technical assessment and provide a business case for replacing their legacy consumer loan origination system.
Assessing enterprise technology for a modern consumer lending experience
Celerity began with a technical assessment that revealed a number of issues and missed opportunities:
Backlogs
Efforts to maintain and enhance their application were met with large backlogs. A simple text edit to a document would take weeks due to a lack of omni-channel architecture.
Limited resources
A shrinking pool of resources to support the application would routinely result in projects running over-budget by months and additional costs over $1 million.
Missed opportunities
Slow speed to market due to backlogs and resources hobbled their ability to run other projects that would keep the credit union competitive.
Slowed responses
Employees, having to access simple information across multiple screens, created unnecessary waits and lag times processing credit union personal loans and responding to customers. Internal support teams spent most of their time resolving issues on loan applications.
Lack of scalability
Because of the system’s limitations, some products weren’t available over the web. Meanwhile, competitors could offer those capabilities, negatively impacting the credit union’s market share by the day.
Resistant culture
A low willingness to adapt to change hindered the credit union’s ability to grasp the severity of issues and concerns of growth, scalability and more importantly, costs.
Assessing enterprise technology for a modern consumer lending experience
Celerity began with a technical assessment that revealed a number of issues and missed opportunities:
Backlogs
Efforts to maintain and enhance their application were met with large backlogs. A simple text edit to a document would take weeks due to a lack of omni-channel architecture.
Limited resources
A shrinking pool of resources to support the application would routinely result in projects running over-budget by months and additional costs over $1 million.
Missed opportunities
Slow speed to market due to backlogs and resources hobbled their ability to run other projects that would keep the credit union competitive.
Slowed responses
Employees, having to access simple information across multiple screens, created unnecessary waits and lag times processing credit union personal loans and responding to customers. Internal support teams spent most of their time resolving issues on loan applications.
Lack of scalability
Because of the system’s limitations, some products weren’t available over the web. Meanwhile, competitors could offer those capabilities, negatively impacting the credit union’s market share by the day.
Resistant culture
A low willingness to adapt to change hindered the credit union’s ability to grasp the severity of issues and concerns of growth, scalability and more importantly, costs.
"Celerity understood how to work with our culture and changing needs of our teams to effectively gain alignment, and didn’t miss a beat amidst the pandemic."
Building the case for new enterprise technology
Once the technical assessment was complete, the Celerity team moved forward with its assessment framework to conduct interviews with platform users, vet replacement platforms and build the business case. Working hand in hand with project stakeholders, IT and the business users, Celerity:
- Developed application documentation including entity relationship diagrams, technical debt analysis, and solution scorecards to rank prospective solutions
- Conducted user interviews and future feature design sessions to develop a solution framework
- Delivered an actionable plan that included revamped Apple Card and TrueCar-like customer experiences and employee experiences
- Conducted market analysis of consumer trends and competitors to keep the credit union abreast of their competition and evolving consumer needs
- Provided a business case for an end-to-end replacement platform
- Analyzed various vendor supported loan origination systems
- Provided solutions that provide insight into operational reports that would remediate reporting lags for compliance
This research helped build the case for the credit union to make an informed, data-based decision to encourage leadership to make the case to use this as an initial case for a platform modernization enterprise wide.
Building the case for new enterprise technology
Once the technical assessment was complete, the Celerity team moved forward with its assessment framework to conduct interviews with platform users, vet replacement platforms and build the business case. Working hand in hand with project stakeholders, IT and the business users, Celerity:
- Developed application documentation including entity relationship diagrams, technical debt analysis, and solution scorecards to rank prospective solutions
- Conducted user interviews and future feature design sessions to develop a solution framework
- Delivered an actionable plan that included revamped Apple Card and TrueCar-like customer experiences and employee experiences
- Conducted market analysis of consumer trends and competitors to keep the credit union abreast of their competition and evolving consumer needs
- Provided a business case for an end-to-end replacement platform
- Analyzed various vendor supported loan origination systems
- Provided solutions that provide insight into operational reports that would remediate reporting lags for compliance
This research helped build the case for the credit union to make an informed, data-based decision to encourage leadership to make the case to use this as an initial case for a platform modernization enterprise wide.
Recommending a modern consumer lending platform for all the credit union’s needs
With Celerity’s assessment, the credit union has reached full agreement across the executive board that the antiquation, technical debt and the opportunity costs have reached a point to move forward with a replacement platform.
Now the credit union can recapture their missed opportunity costs by providing an omni-channel, digital, modern consumer lending application experience for their members. Both employees and members will benefit from Apple Card and TrueCar-like experiences, simplified loan application processes, and a lower loan application abandonment rate. The replacement enterprise technology will also support speeding new products to market for competitive advantage. And, finally, the credit union’s technical debt will now be wiped clean as they move forward with a more agile solution that doesn’t rely on tribal knowledge and limited skill sets to maintain and enhance the platform.
Recommending a modern consumer lending platform for all the credit union’s needs
With Celerity’s assessment, the credit union has reached full agreement across the executive board that the antiquation, technical debt and the opportunity costs have reached a point to move forward with a replacement platform.
Now the credit union can recapture their missed opportunity costs by providing an omni-channel, digital, modern consumer lending application experience for their members. Both employees and members will benefit from Apple Card and TrueCar-like experiences, simplified loan application processes, and a lower loan application abandonment rate. The replacement enterprise technology will also support speeding new products to market for competitive advantage. And, finally, the credit union’s technical debt will now be wiped clean as they move forward with a more agile solution that doesn’t rely on tribal knowledge and limited skill sets to maintain and enhance the platform.
Before Celerity
High costs to support their homegrown legacy application
Unscalable application insufficient to support mobile experience, same-day funding and omni-channel experiences
Slow processing and document disclosure with no archiving or record retention
Lack of ability to support digital experience
With Celerity
Greater functionality and reduced costs to plan for, maintain and enhance new system
Scalable solution, to support exponential growth and their credit union personal loan portfolio
Processing and funding times in minutes with complete record retention and archiving with a new consumer loan origination platform
Apple Card and TrueCar-like mobile experience for increased satisfaction and decreased application time for members
Related Case Studies
Leading Financial Institution
Managing a product rollout
Major National Credit Union