Financial Center First Credit Union

For 66 years, Financial Center First Credit Union (Financial Center First) has been serving its members and the community of Central Indiana. Learn how Financial Center First realized a 161% increase in transactions funded through self-serve channels by partnering with SWBC Payments.

Financial Center First is a member-owned, not-for-profit, co-operative whose members receive financial benefits in the form of lower loan rates, higher savings rates, and lower fees than banks. Financial Center First sets itself apart from the crowd by providing its members with financial education, tools, and resources. In fact, they are a six-time national winner of CUNA’s Alphonse DesJardins Award for Financial Literacy.

In a continued effort to provide all members with an exceptional and convenient member experience, Financial Center First identified areas where they could improve overall operations.

Established in

$ 0 Million

Assets exceeding

Number of branches

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Number of members

Objectives

Make the payments process easier for indirect borrowers
Improve member experience by reducing queue size and call volume
Provide a self-service method for members to make payments from external bank accounts
Reduce inefficiencies in contact center
Increase new online and mobile banking enrollment

Successes

Improved overall member experience by providing members with multichannel options to complete transactions easily and independently
Increased total funded amount of loan payments processed exclusively online by 57%
Increased total funded transactions processed through self-service channels by 161%
Reduced call volume, processing time, and length of queues for inbound calls to contact center
Provided an avenue for indirect borrowers to make loan payments from external bank accounts

The Challenge

Prior to adopting SWBC’s Payments solution in 2018, indirect borrowers and members of Financial Center First had to contact the credit union solely by phone to complete payment transactions. Since today’s consumers expect easily accessible payment options via their preferred channels, this did not make for a winning member experience.

Not having a convenient payments system was a particularly critical challenge for Financial Center First because a significant portion of their consumer lending portfolio comes from their high volume of indirect loans. They needed to provide these indirect borrowers with a self-service payments method so that they could easily make payments from accounts at other institutions.

Due to high call volumes from taking payments exclusively by phone, the internal staff at Financial Center First’s contact center was unable to provide the most attentive customer service experience, and their members suffered the inconvenience of longer wait times.

Marla Tackett, Vice President of Strategic Development at Financial Center First explains their situation: “Prior to adopting SWBC Payments, we asked our members to contact us by phone to complete transactions, which was inefficient for our staff and not a great experience for our members, who had to wait in longer queues.”

Marla Tackett
Vice President of Strategic Development

USalliance Financial

With a significant portion of their consumer lending portfolio originating from indirect channels, USALLIANCE experienced challenges related to supporting these borrowers. With respect to payment remittance in particular, delayed settlement and posting, as well as slow return notifications were common.