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Maximizing An Effective Platform To Meet Members Where They Are Today 

In this day and age, credit unions must implement innovative technologies flexible enough to keep up with evolving member preferences. There are many avenues a credit union can take to provide the best tools to members, including hiring specialized talent for building proprietary software or outsourcing technology from financial technology companies. Choosing one option over the other, however, has its own disadvantages. For one, building in-house comes with large investments for development, maintenance, and talent. Likewise, outsourcing technology might provide challenges with customization and cost. Clearly, there are many obstacles credit unions face to provide the most enhanced member experience. Despite these challenges, there are valuable partnerships credit unions can seek out that provide not only the capability to implement an innovative platform, but also to build additional, specialized features that enable unique differentiation in the market.

In fact, Patelco Credit Union ($9B, Dublin, CA) has been able to do this through its partnership with NCR Terafina.

Innovation for Members

Patelco Credit Union developed a partnership with Terafina for originating HELOC and other consumer loans, along with deposit account opening across the digital, branch, and call center channels. Their team found that they were able to get to market very quickly with Terafina and utilize its flexible platform in special ways. As a result, the Patelco team was able to develop a seamless addition to their digital onboarding process called Check My Rate.

 

 

The product enables members to pre-qualify into a Patelco loan product without impacting their credit score. Once selected, the member experience seamlessly transitions into the full application process with data pre-filled. Check My Rate has seen exceptional results thus far, with auto loan application completion rates increasing from 16% to 69%, consumer product application rates up to 70% completion, and application abandonment rates dropping substantially.

Venky Annadurai, Patelco’s vice president of technology, engineering, and development, has found that their technology team needed little support from Terafina to build out their extension of the platform and proclaimed, “The Patelco development team was able to utilize Terafina’s extensible platform and develop Check My Rate easily. The team at Terafina was available to support, however, and we were able to do the heavy lifting ourselves. The ability to buy a proven platform, have it implemented by a qualified team, and then adapt the platform’s capabilities to meet our unique needs was the best decision we made. It has helped us achieve business objectives that would have cost the credit union significantly more time and money if we were to build and later own the capability ourselves.”

Terafina and Patelco Credit Union have continued to maximize their partnership through close collaboration and specific customization of the platform. Kal Majmundar, Patelco’s chief technology officer, stated, “the NCR Terafina platform allows us to expedite integration with third parties to build a compelling and effortless experience for our members.”

Partnerships Key for Growth

Patelco Credit Union has demonstrated a clearly effective way for partnering with innovative companies and extending its capabilities to maximize member experience. It is essential to establish vendor relationships that can provide an exceptional out-of-the-box solution that can be built upon in specific ways to optimize success. With 44% of credit unions expecting to select a new or replacement digital account-opening platform in 2023, it is important for credit unions to find a forward-thinking technology partner with proven experience in creating exceptional omnichannel onboarding experiences for their members.

To learn how other credit unions – including Citadel Credit Union and Harborstone Credit Union – have had success with NCR Terafina and how to optimize the onboarding experience for members, check out our latest white paper by clicking below.

This article is sponsored by a recognized solutions provider in the credit union industry. Callahan & Associates does not endorse vendors or the solutions they offer, and the views and opinions offered here might not reflect those of Callahan. If you are interested in contributing an article on CreditUnions.com, please contact the Callahan team at ads@creditunions.com or 1-800-446-7453.
March 8, 2023

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