LenderHub

Self-serve payment technology was developed and continues to evolve as a way to bring convenience and efficiency to consumers, businesses, and financial institutions. From a business standpoint, giving consumers and account holders a way to seamlessly make their loan payments, transfer funds across accounts, pay bills, and send money from peer to peer provides value and can create operational efficiencies.

When it comes to technology, one thing's for sure: it's constantly changing and evolving. Financial technology, or FinTech, is no exception. And while it can be tiring to keep up—let alone stay ahead—in the industry, financial institutions must do so, since falling behind quickly allows competitors to gain ground.

Robotic process automation, or RPA, is technology that utilizes computer software programs, or “bots” to perform actions that a human would traditionally do, then reproduces and integrates those actions within digital systems to execute a specific business task.

RPA bots are able to capture data and perform certain actions based on that data incredibly effectively and efficiently.

In the past decade, the digital transformation has reshaped how credit unions are expected to interact and communicate with their borrowers. This is due in large part to advances in Fintech and evolving consumer expectations. As your member base shifts to a larger number of millennials and their younger Gen Z counterparts, traditional forms of communication will likely fall on deaf ears.

In the past ten years, the country has made great strides towards economic recovery, and many millennials who entered the job and housing markets during the downturn have had a chance to pay down their student loan debt and advance in their careers, which means that they finally feel confident about owning a home. In fact, homeownership rates among people in their late 20’s and early 30’s are two to four times higher than any other age group.¹

Companies in every industry have had to adapt to growing consumer expectations for financial interactions that are fast, easy, and secure. Experiences with online retail firms like Amazon have conditioned consumers to expect a seamless payment process where debit or credit cards can be used with the click of a button from any device—or even activated through voice commands. That retail experience has evolved into strong bill payment preferences that have influenced how consumers want to manage their loan payments.

Think back to a moment when you’ve left a restaurant, a hotel, maybe a store, and you witness a high-quality customer experience. It could’ve been a small detail or several small details, that when added up provided you, a very different experience. It’s these little experiences more and more retail shops are embracing to stand out from the crowd. The demand for high-quality experiences has spilled over into the financial services market in recent years, thanks to increased competition from traditional and non-traditional financial institutions. Now, more than ever, consumers have a wide range of banking options including loan payment options.

If your financial institution works with a third-party vendor for your collections efforts, you know how important it is to ensure your partners perform at an optimal level. The vetting and on-boarding process alone can take months, so the "set it and forget it" mentality could be detrimental to the overall performance of your collections operation. To ensure your outsourced partner performs at a high level, it’s wise to understand their company procedures and establish agreed upon benchmarks to measure their performance.

An Automated Valuation Model, or more commonly known as an AVM, is a program that automatically analyzes various data points to produce an estimate on the current value of a home or property. An AVM includes:

Being in the payment industry for well over two decades, now, more than ever, we are seeing consumer experience and the demand for self-service solutions causing significant growth in online and mobile payments. Particularly, in the last year, we’ve seen self-service channels are growing at about three times the rate of “agent-led” calls.