Credit Union Loan Source decides to switch to NLS

"We have total transparency to all actions on every loan, and having an audit trail has been everything." - RuthAnn Riggs, COO, Credit Union Loan Source

Credit Union Loan Source (CULS), a full-service originator of prime indirect auto loans for credit union participants, needed more flexibility in their loan management system. They were using the hosted version of Shaw 5.2, but it didn't meet their needs. CULS moved to the Nortridge Loan System for more robust reporting, better audit capabilities, workflows, and templates that would help with compliance and accountability.

“Ever since we went live with NLS, we’ve been able to do so much more than we could do with our former system, and our customers love it,” said RuthAnn Riggs, COO, Credit Union Loan Source. “NLS has a more robust payment system, we’ve been able to rollout mobile wallet, our customers get more descriptive statements now, and the call volume in our call center has been cut in half. Also, the visibility that our team members have into exactly what’s going on in accounts, including payment history and transaction history – is so good. And perhaps most important, before NLS, we didn’t have a daily trail balance, and now we do. A daily trial balance is everything to us.”

One of NLS's strongest attributes is being able to customize the software to adapt to specific business models. An essential component of CULS's business is to allow a set of investors to choose their level of investment for a given set of loans. CULS needs to provide reports and data that investors can use to pass through their risk-appetite models. These reports are vital because they allow the investors to monitor the level of return and their level of risk, helping them to make critical investment decisions. It's a challenge to support two types of customers - borrowers and lenders – because they each have their own set of requirements. It's also challenging to find one loan management system that provides a solution to varying degrees of involvement per investment, per investor. NLS meets that need.

Another area that provides more flexibility than their previous system is the ability to build templates. There are numerous tasks that must be accomplished, including repossession, SCRA, bankruptcy, and recovery, so they used NLS to configure task and workflow templates, providing more efficiency and streamlining these vital processes. Previously, they were constrained by Shaw's predefined fields and screens.

CULS former software didn't allow them to input all the data points they wanted. Now, CULS can integrate multiple sources of data into NLS, including loan application data from their origination system, credit scores including FICO, income, and other relevant origination data, allowing them to have one source of truth for analysis and reporting. CULS was able to leverage NLS's nearly unlimited UDFs (User-Defined Fields), which enable them to track all their various data with high integrity and in the same system where loans are kept – giving them more accurate and streamlined reporting and auditing.

CULS has big plans for the future, and NLS is designed to support growth and diversification. As they add other loan products, NLS's flexibility means they'll be able to expand their offerings without worrying whether or not their current loan management system can handle their needs.

"I can report on every field on-demand in real-time any time I want," said RuthAnn. "We have total transparency to all actions on every loan, and having an audit trail has been everything."