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LorMet Community Federal Credit Union was formed in 1936 to serve the steel mill workers in central Ohio. Over the years the credit union has successfully transformed into a community credit union serving nearly 20,000 members. In order to continue their growth and better deliver the latest financial products and services to their members, LorMet had to replace their somewhat antiquated core data processing system with a modern platform delivered with the same high service levels that they provide to their members. Their choice was the Shartec system.
The senior management team at LorMet, which is headed by President/CEO Dan Cwalina and CFO Emily Bopp, were determined to find the best vendor to meet their long list of requirements. These two credit union executives are uniquely qualified for the task – they have over 43 years of combined hands-on credit union experience between them! The $150M asset credit union started with nearly a dozen vendors on their search list and quickly narrowed it down to just a handful. Dan confides that “we have always found that other credit union executives are very honest and candid in their reviews of their core system providers. We appreciated their advice and all of them spoke very highly of Sharetec.” Emily adds that “we not only made quite a few phone calls, but we went out and made site visits as well to get the full picture on how the credit unions were using the systems.”
After about a year of solid due diligence, the team chose Sharetec. According to Dan, “Sharetec had virtually all of the services that we were looking for, and we felt confident that our members would be well served by their product set.” As CFO, naturally Emily was concerned about the costs of conversion, but she notes that “Sharetec bundled everything at a very affordable price point for us.” With all of Sharetec’s features and functionality built-in, coupled with their numerous third party partnerships that they bring to the table, LorMet was able to dramatically reduce their third party vendor costs. “It is simply too costly, time consuming and inefficient to constantly have to manage these vendors,” states Dan. He adds: “We now have a one source system that is efficient and easy to use – all of the member’s information is at our fingertips.”
After a smooth conversion and successful launch that was welcomed by employees looking to move to a modern core system and user interface, LorMet is now a couple of years into using their new Shartec platform. In terms of customer service and technical support, Dan and Emily agree that “they have been very responsive and get back to us quickly. We have experienced virtually zero downtime with this outsourced solution which has really helped boost our member service levels.” Dan concludes that “working with Sharetec has been a great experience because they are not just a vendor, they are a collaborative partner that shares our vision of member service.”