Access Business Technologies

In these days of multi-SEG and community-based credit unions, ChevronTexaco Credit Union (CTCU) is somewhat of an anomaly: a sole SEG credit union that has maintained an exclusive relationship with their sponsor for sixty eight years. The Oakland, CA-based credit union offers their employee members a wide range of loans including personal loans, credit cards, automobile loans, lines of credit, share and certificate secured loans and home mortgages. Other credit union lending departments would be quite envious of CTCU’s members because they are a very credit worthy group with an extremely low record of delinquencies. 

Yet, all was not so rosy when Rebecca Lytle, Executive Vice President of Lending and Member Services at ChevronTexaco Credit Union, joined the financial institution two years ago. While very pleased to be joining a successful credit union with a long track record of quality member service, she inherited an inefficient loan process and outdated software, particularly in regards to mortgage loan processing and servicing. The Credit Union sought out the expertise of Duncan Gamlen, a real estate consultant with years of mortgage lending experience, to assist her and her staff of fifteen with transforming their mortgage lending processes from a labor intensive endeavor into an automated, process efficient operation. It became immediately clear that an ASP (Application Service Provider) solution was the preferred choice, so the search was on for a high quality partner that could help the credit union grow their mortgage business and efficiently – and affordably - service their loans.

While they considered many options, the choice for Ms. Lytle and Mr. Gamlen was quite easy: Access Business Technologies (ABT). Having worked with the Sacramento, CA-based company in the past, they had first hand knowledge in regards to the high quality of their services and their overall professionalism. ABT’s staff of seasoned mortgage experts quickly went to work integrating their browser based solution with the credit union’s various applications and their core processing system. Ms. Lytle was pleased to report that “they set realistic time frames and consistently lived up to their commitments.” In order to avoid any interruptions to CTCU’s business operations, the implementation and testing was done after the close of the business day and through the night. “They kept the lines of communication open at all times and worked hard at maintaining a close relationship,” she adds.

The results of their re-engineering efforts have been impressive: CTCU went from handling under 300 mortgage loans per year in the late 1990s to processing over 1100 in 2002. And 2003 is off to an even better start: in just over half a year they have already equaled their total for all of 2002. Even more impressive is the fact that they accomplished this remarkable growth without any advertising and with minimal increase in lending staff! “ABT’s PowerCore system has been an exceptionally valuable and cost effective solution for us,” explains Ms. Lytle. CTCU enjoys the power and flexibility of the PowerCore system because it can: originate loans; underwrite loans; board loans, post payments, and manage exceptions; sell or release individual loans or loan portfolios; and manage the smallest individual loan detail to loan portfolios in excess of 100,000 loans with a single, easy to use interface.

Ms. Lytle especially appreciates the robust reporting capabilities of PowerCore. That’s because under the old system, it used to take hours and hours to generate reports. Now she and her staff can pull a wide array of detailed reports in just a few seconds, thanks to the well thought out design of PowerCore and its real-time environment. This efficient system is no accident - ABT is rooted in mortgage expertise, founded and developed by mortgage professionals; in fact, all company employees have a mortgage background. As for support, Ms. Lytle enthuses that “I have been really impressed with their professionalism – the support is phenomenal and their approach to the entire mortgage process is comprehensive.”

Like every financial institution, CTCU is very concerned with security and the privacy of their members’ data. As part of the original due diligence process, Mr. Gamlen made a trip to ABT’s headquarters and toured their world class data center. He emphasizes that “I performed an exhaustive analysis of ABT's security and came away convinced that it offered the most secure virtual private network and server system available.” Ms. Lytle was also impressed with their SAS-70 Certified operations center: “we are a very security conscious credit union and we felt very comfortable with ABT’s commitment to high levels of security and encryption.” ABT provides their numerous financial institution clients with the peace of mind that comes from knowing that ABT has redundant, diverse-path Internet access, redundant power with generator backup, off-site tape storage in climate controlled, unmarked storage vaults and a disaster recovery site, complete with replicated servers, a tape autoloader and multiplexed T1 Internet connectivity.

In operation, PowerCore is designed for flexible workflows that can accommodate any credit union's business rules and policies. Importantly, it does so at a fraction of the resources required for the typical in-house model. “It is a rock solid platform that has served us well with virtually no downtime,” states Ms. Lytle. “ABT is so responsive and their expertise is so invaluable that we don’t think of them as a vendor, but we consider them to be a true business partner,” she adds. With the success that they have had in deploying PowerCore's management and delivery system to increase mortgage loan servicing efficiencies and productivity, it is little wonder that ChevronTexaco Credit Union is so delighted by their partnership with Access Business Technologies.