CSG Systems

Since 1934, Centris Federal Credit Union has prided itself on the excellent service that it delivers to its members. The credit union serves over 59,000 members in the highly competitive banking marketplace of Nebraska. In order to help compete with the dozens of community banks, credit unions, mega-banks, and other financial services firms in their area, Centris knew that they needed to provide high quality and timely statements to their members. The $330M asset credit union turned to a company that has over 20 years of billing/statement/printing experience: CSG Systems.

With nearly 30 years of experience in the credit union movement, Steve Edgerton knows the ins and outs of credit union operations and technology. As Vice President of Technology for Centris FCU for the past 8 years, Steve has worked with a wide range of technology vendors, including three different statement vendors. Steve recalls that “we had quite a few problems with print stream and mailing issues in the past, so we had a strong desire to find a vendor who would do a better job for us and our members.” When a former Board Member recommended CSG Systems, Steve and his team presented the firm – along with five vendors – with a detailed Request For Proposal (RFP). After laboriously sorting through the responses for a month or two, it was clear that CSG was the obvious leader both in price and technology.

However, before awarding the contract, the Centris FCU team wanted a first hand look at CSG’s facilities. Steve describes the results: “We were really impressed with the plant tour. Their facilities are very secure, their volumes are amazing, and their quality control is extraordinary.” Because of their state-of-the-art technology, CSG was able to provide a remarkable guaranteed turnaround time of 72 hours. In action, Steve is pleased to report that “we actually see turnaround times closer to 48 hours. Their turnaround time is phenomenally fast!” Centris has an aggressive goal of delivering every member statement by the fifth day of the month, but depending on how the weekends fall at the end of the month, the credit union can actually have statements delivered on the first day of the month. According to Steve, “we have received a lot of positive e-mails back from members who were pleased with both the quality of our statements and the timely manner that they now receive them.”

As if the speed, quality and significant cost savings were not enough, CSG Systems delivers other benefits to the credit union as well. Not only is their hardware of the highest quality, but CSG maintains a staff of experienced software developers that helped the credit union convert their print stream data from their core system into a database format. This conversion opens a whole new realm of flexibility in statement printing. Steve explains: “We could easily move sections around on the statement, add bolding and different fonts, plus I can go online and securely view the statements over the Internet before the production run starts.” Centris also enjoys two-sided printing because CSG has moved the required compliance information to the last page of the statement as printed image instead of having some type of preprinted stock. This frees up space for double-sided printing, saves on paper costs, and makes it quite easy to make changes any time there are new regulatory updates.

Centris FCU’s Marketing Department is also pleased with the flexibility that the new statements bring. They met jointly with the implementation team from IT and from CSG developing the look and feel of the statement as well as designing the interface systems to allow the highest flexibility for direct member marketing. For example, there is a flexible and expandable messaging space that can be tailored to each member. Again this kind of powerful marketing technique is due to the fact that the operations at CSG Systems are completely database driven. In addition to statement inserts or “stuffers”, the marketing team at Centris has a full page available to them at the end of the statement for delivering targeted offers. Virtually any combination of data from the core system can be used to identify characteristics for a targeted marketing campaign. And, Centris can have different full page advertisements for different characteristics in the same statement cycle. Essentially they now have the freedom to do “if, then” marketing based on the unique financial situation of each member – they are no longer constrained to traditional and limited segmentation by geography, zip code, etc. that most core systems provide.

With the members, IT Department and Marketing Department all pleased with the new statements, it would be easy to forget that the call center and front line member service representatives also love the new design. That is because they can easily look up the exact copy of the members’ statements through a browser with their existing optical system. CSG Systems sends the PDF formatted statements back to the credit union completely indexed by name, account number and Personal ID. Steve confirms that “our employees have provided 100% positive feedback with the new statements.” He concludes that “we found a statement vendor that will undoubtedly be on the leading edge of technological capabilities and we may never have to go through the painstaking process of changing vendors again. CSG has proven to be a wonderful business partner and they deliver a great product along with peace of mind.”