Georgia’s Own Credit Union improves audit throughput by 66% with ACES Quality Management

CHALLENGE

Powered primarily by spreadsheets and email, Georgia’s Own’s quality control (QC) process for its consumer lending channel was highly manual. The QC team would pull up to 12 reports between its core banking platform, loan origination system (LOS) and third-party imaging center to determine the number of new loan applications across all consumer lending lines. From there, over a 1–2-day period, the team would select sample loans and manually assign them. Once the audit was completed over the month, the one who created the sample would take one-two business days to compile their results to create a report for the credit union’s directors and regional area managers for rebuttal before finalizing the audit for the month via email. As a credit union that prides itself on innovation, they were ready for a solution that could improve their processes while best serving their member community.

RESULTS

Since implementing ACES, Georgia’s Own has:

• Increased its audit throughput by 66% while improving loan quality;
• Gained operational insights to drive growth and enhance member service;
• Condensed reporting turn times to identify and rectify system loan manufacturing issues quickly; and
• Established top-down accountability for loan quality throughout the organization.

Transparency

Since implementing ACES, Georgia’s Own has gained a deeper understanding of its QC process across all consumer and residential third-party oversight lending channels. As a result, the QC team has refined some of its processes to maintain loan quality and mitigate risk.

“One of the areas that ACES has helped us improve is our loan sampling process,” Rada explained. “Prior to ACES, we would use our spreadsheets to provide what the sample was and what the findings were to our C-suite and VPs. Now we're able to not only provide what the sample is and what the exceptions were, but also the defect ratio and trending exceptions in order to identify specific trending issues and then create training and action plans moving forward.”

Efficiency & Accountability
With ACES, Georgia’s Own has a deeper insight into the team’s productivity and workflows, which has increased accountability. Prior to implementing ACES, Georgia’s Own estimated it conducted 200-300 audits a month. With ACES, that number has increased by 66% to 300-500 audits a month. In addition, ACES has taken the guesswork out of the QC team’s capacity management by providing insights that allow Georgia’s Own to refine its processes based on real-time data and information.

“Now, we’re able to see, on average, how long it takes to complete a review for each loan type and benchmark our auditor’s productivity against those averages,” Rada said. “ACES has shined a light on our productivity and empowered us to hold our teams accountable, which has enabled us to calculate our full-time employee needs more accurately.”

In addition, ACES has improved communication between QC auditors and other areas of responsibility for more immediate defect remediation.

“Before ACES, it would take up to the end of the month to get to a place of providing feedback on review findings,” Rada added. “With ACES, we now have an immediate feedback channel between our analysts, loan officers and processors, which makes for a more interactive experience for all parties that helps us resolve defects more efficiently.”

ACES Managed Questionnaires

While the ACES system comes with multiple sets of pre-built questionnaires, users can build their own question sets tailored to their individual needs – a feature that Georgia’s Own took full advantage of and greatly appreciated.

“When we first implemented, our favorite feature was ACES Questionnaires because you can customize, or utilize what already comes in the questionnaires, and then additionally add in your policy and procedure and membership requirements, which is something that not everyone was able to provide. A brand-new team member can come in and see our QC checklist and understand the regulatory impacts of what they do. I think that’s super important to give meaning to our QC team’s work,” Rada said.

Reporting

Having visibility from the top-down is something Georgia’s Own struggled with when they were working out of spreadsheets. What was once a time-consuming task is now not only efficient but much more complete and meaningful for leadership.

“Now that we've been in ACES for a longer amount of time, my favorite part is the reporting. Being able to provide detailed reporting to our executive leadership to say, ‘This is what we're doing, and this is why our quality control program is significantly important,’ is something that we weren't able to do before. So, being able to provide that robust reporting, and any customization you would like, speaks volumes above any other feature of ACES. For a new employee, it allows us to do supervisory reviews so that we can ensure they are auditing to our standard."

Consistent Support

Georiga’s Own utilizes MeridianLink as its loan origination system and Fiserv DNA as its core banking platform. The ACES team worked closely with Georgia’s Own and its IT partners to ensure smooth integration from day one.

“Our ACES relationship managers and our implementation team were really a part of our team. You could tell their passion for the software just by the way that they wanted to help us out.” Rada explained. “We met with ACES support weekly and on an ad hoc basis to ensure all our needs were met, and they celebrated alongside us once we were fully functional in the ACES system.”

“ACES has always been an advocate for us as a lender,” she added. “They’ve provided a platform for us to network with others in our industry, and they let the product speak for itself. The confidence the ACES team has in the system was evident from our first conversation with them. We’ve really enjoyed the platform, and every interaction with the ACES team has been extremely pleasant.”