Driving Real Advantage, in Real-Time
The Importance of Timing for a Data Driven Credit Union
Roger Willey
Chief Revenue Officer
29 September 2020
Real-time is an overexposed buzz word these days. The truth is; an end to end real-time solution is not available in today’s market. And yet it is a key for credit unions who need to keep pace in a highly competitive financial services market.
According to a recent research study from Callahan and Associates, despite the pandemic, the first quarter of 2020 saw a rise of 3.4% in credit union membership year-over-year. Despite the challenges of social distancing and limited access to branch locations, consumers were attracted to the unique benefits only offered by credit unions. Although this is not a significant increase, it should not be discounted given that it occurred during an extremely down market.
A real-time ecosystem for a credit union provides another unique advantage to build on. Although your members may not understand the difference, they will experience it. Your transition to a data-driven credit union will drive member interest, loyalty and streamline your operations to maximize profits; strengthening the overall health of your organization.
So, what if your credit union truly operated in real-time? Meaning that information maintained within your technology systems operated completely in synch with daily activity. How would that change how you operate, make decisions and monitor your business?
I was asked recently by an industry colleague; “what is the value of being real-time for a credit union?”. The assumption as soon as the question was offered was “just time savings?” It made me think about all the talk in our industry about being “real-time” and wonder if we have really thought through the value of operating in the “now”
“What if a credit union could operate in real-time, across every product, every operating process, every payment, and all ancillary applications?”
Certainly, there are time-saving benefits to being a real-time credit union. But there is so much more to consider. What if a credit union could operate in real-time, across every product, every operating process, every payment, and all ancillary applications? What would that environment look like? Here are some thoughts to get you thinking.
So, to answer the question, real-time does save time, but it also has an impact on just about every discipline within a credit union. There are undoubtedly more benefits than noted here, but credit unions who want to achieve these advantages need to initiate efforts to establish technology systems that will make real-time a reality.
Establishing a real-time credit union requires a new approach to the technology used to support your business today. The ability to capture and store key data, within the stream of daily business, requires a finesse not available within today’s third-party dependent systems. VisiFI’s strength and focus is using our 40 plus years of experience and our capacity as part of a 3-billion-dollar company, to develop a proprietary core technology platform to manage your entire business flow.
Making the complete technology system operate more efficiently, timely and manageable.
VisiFI’s Real-Time General Ledger synchs with core data instantly and presents current and detailed data as transactions post. For over 25 years, our proven solution has been the nucleus for data-driven financial institutions throughout the world.
