Your Mid-Year Lending Operations Assessment – Preparing for 2025

As we hit the mid-point of the year and strategic planning begins, it’s the perfect time to assess your lending technology resources and capabilities and determine if they are optimized for the best results. In today's lending landscape, every aspect of the workflow plays a crucial role in shaping the member experience and driving credit union engagement. This makes optimization key for credit unions looking to deliver exceptional service and operational efficiency.

Optimization is about streamlining processes to maximize staff productivity and effectively handle high volumes. It involves implementing improvements throughout the workflow to increase efficiencies, elevate member experiences, and refine the overall quality of the lending program. 

The Importance of Automation

Modern technology makes automation a natural component of optimization strategies. It will simplify the complex origination processes, ensuring timely actions and heightened member engagement. It will also save time and reduce errors, making the workflow smoother for both staff and members.

Embrace low-code configurability, empowering staff to customize workflows effortlessly. This flexibility allows your team to adapt quickly to changing needs, assign tasks efficiently, and collaborate seamlessly across departments. With such streamlined workflows, the credit union experiences a boost in operational efficiency and member satisfaction.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is another technology game-changer. It revolutionizes lending automation by accelerating processing, detecting fraud with precision, and ensuring consistent evaluation of documents and data. The AI-driven automation benefits your members and staff by saving valuable time and enhancing decision-making accuracy.

Optimize Decisioning

An effective decision engine streamlines underwriting, boosts productivity, and supports informed decisions. However, it's essential to take additional steps for optimal decision-making.

Consider when you last updated your scoring model. Are you leveraging core data insights? What fraud detection tools do you use? Ensuring your decision-making technology is up-to-date, accurate, and optimized directly impacts member assessments.

AI is increasingly valuable for decisioning. It enhances consistency and accuracy, providing a clearer view of member applications. As AI capabilities grow, integrating it into your strategy becomes more beneficial.

Better decisioning means more approvals resulting from a more comprehensive risk assessment. Evaluating and optimizing decisioning technology empowers internal teams to make better, more effective decisions.

Maximize Communication Resources

The best communication stems from efficiency and consistency. The latest technology can now streamline interactions between staff and members in various ways, reducing friction and increasing pull-through.

Comprehensive communication tools now available include document collection, text messaging, automated notifications, and quick and attentive support for your team members. By leveraging these tools, staff can optimize productivity by messaging members in real-time, improving satisfaction and loan outputs.

A Modern LOS with an Excellent User Experience

The modern loan origination system (LOS) has an excellent user interface (UI) that is intuitive, easy to use, and configurable. It addresses your team’s challenges and offers solutions for easier and more efficient work. Your team should find the UI accessible and user-friendly despite their experience level. An interface that feels familiar in design makes it easier to learn and adapt to.

The interface should be flexible and scalable, include robust admin tools, and have built-in document mapping to streamline processes. It’s imperative that the chosen solution have a tight integration with the organization’s host system to import and export data for faster decisioning and processing. Lastly, the LOS should have a native point of sale frontend solution to reduce friction for application entry for applicants.

As part of your assessment, evaluate every aspect of your workflow and determine where improvements can be made. Is automation being utilized? When was the last time you optimized your decisioning process? Are you leveraging modern communication tools that maximize your member touchpoints? Does your user interface ease your team’s workflow and promote efficiency? By leveraging the right technology, you can create a streamlined and member-centric lending program, enhancing operational efficiency and elevating the overall member experience. As a result, you’ll see increased approvals, reduced friction, and, ultimately, a stronger lending program that benefits both your members and staff. 

David Adams is the SVP of lender client experience at Origence, the leading credit union lending technology company in the US.