How America First Credit Union Achieved Efficiency and Cost Savings with Truv

Hello, everyone. Come one, come all. We're going to give it a second and let some folks join while we're waiting. Why don't you type into the chat? Everybody, thanks for coming. Why don't you type in in the chat where you're calling in from? We have a intimate group of credit union leaders that are have registered for this webinar for the most part, which is great. I'll start off. I'm in Washington D.C. boom. Wife works for the government, so we got to be close to the Pentagon. That's why I'm here. Otherwise it'd be in a place where homes are cheaper. Austin, let me ask you, where you, where are you calling from? I know where you're calling in from, but. Yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, my name is Austin Coleman. I'm calling in from Utah.

Cool. And while we're waiting, just give it a little bit longer for attendees to jump in.

Sure.

Why don't you share a fun fact about you or something that people don't know? Maybe a hobby, something interesting. Sure.

Well, I, I live in Utah, so I'm under obligation to ski and I enjoy skiing immensely. It's a family activity. We've been season passes got my wife and kids up over the last couple years. My wife's from the desert, so she's not used to snow or skiing. So that was an adventure to get her up on up on pair of skis. But yeah, that's really what I enjoy enjoy doing here in Utah. It's foolish not to go out and take advantage of the mountain ranges. It's right behind us. I think you're on mute. I can't hear you.

Thank you, Austin.

I, you're welcome.

Like me all day with my team. I, I, I say that sounds awesome. I love snowboarding and skiing and dory. I'm also jealous of you. You're in San Diego and well, I like warm weather, so I'm jealous to be there for sure. All right, why don't we get started here, everyone? If you've come to hear how AFCU has, you know, achieved efficiency and cost savings with their mortgage lending operations using a service like Trove, you have come to the right place. That is what we're going to be diving into today. Austin, you did a little, you touched on it a little bit. But let me just start and just say to everybody, I'm Richard Greaser. I run marketing, help a lot of sales here at Trove, and we're really pleased today to have one of our great clients, Austin Coleman. He's SVP of Mortgage Lending at afcu. And Austin, why don't you do the audience a favor and let them know a little bit about yourself, maybe how you got into mortgage and how long you've been at afcu.

Sure, you bet. Yeah. Name again is Austin Coleman, SVP of Mortgage Lending. And you know, I've been at AFCU for 5 years now. Started out, I've been in mortgages longer than I care to remember, but started out on the operations side of the house, then moved into production, management and running some divisions at a bank and then moved over to a credit union. America first, couldn't be happier. Wonderful culture, great people, just a fine institution. So what I'm responsible for are both two divisions, one being, you know, traditional mortgage, which encompasses everything from servicing to secondary to operations, consumer, direct, retail, etc. And then also I am responsible for our home equity division. So that's your standard home equity loans, helocs, things like that. So I run both of those in both my mortgage division and my home.

I hope everybody is feeling pretty confident that you've got a peer here that's speaking to you. Let's set some ground rules, everybody. I'm watching the chat. If you have questions, don't wait till the end. This is an intimate group. Just throw it into the chat and I'm going to be reading them and as I can, I'm going to address them, especially if it's on topic, to one of the questions that we're talking about. I love these to be participatory and I want you to feel like you're participating. TRUV is providing more accurate data up front at about 80% savings against what most lenders and credit unions are typical are typically used to paying for, for income and employment verifications. So why don't you just let me know. I probably stole a little bit of your thunder there, Austin, but no problem. Why don't you tell me a little bit about, like, the problems that you guys were facing that led you to find truth.

A couple, Richard, is, is one you, you've already touched on was the, the cost and the expense. We're all in the same BO work number. It's, you know, the prices have just escalated so much and margins have compressed in mortgage. It's more expensive now to originate a loan with credits and vendor fees and things like that can keep increasing year over year. So we were looking at a way where we could control cost in an effective way. Right. And so we looked at what we were paying for the work number and Relative to what True's cost was, you know, it saved, like you said, about 80% savings over, over using the work number other various providers. So that's really what led us to, to True love it.

And so primarily cost savings. And that's totally normal. Most folks are looking at us and.

Honestly, I'll also chime in, it was an automation thing as well. You know, ease of use was really, was really a key component. I like to have a deep tech stack in my divisions and True and automation, I'm a firm believer in automation and automate wherever you can. And True just fit into that very nicely as far as what we wanted to accomplish and streamline the process. So it was really Richard, the savings and then the efficiency.

I am also a huge believer in automation as well, which can reduce a lot of human error. So that's awesome. And I think it removes a lot of friction in the loan origination process. So I'd love to hear you say that. So forgive me everybody, I'm getting over a cough, so once in a while I might cough. Austin, what True products are you using today?

We're using Voi Voe and the document upload right now.

Awesome. And so anybody who's listening understands that's our own kind of internal waterfall. Typically people run voie up front at the application and then 10 days before close, a Voe is typically done and you can customize all of that. And then if there's not a hit with the voie, you can do a fallback to a document upload as well through the same interface. And all of these can be embedded in your point of sale or your loan operating system. And so let's touch, let's touch on that. How are you, how are you implemented, Austin?

Well, in home, we do it differently in home equity and in mortgage home equity we use the True dashboard and in mortgage we are integrated with Encompass. So that's been, you know, very slick process for, for everyone involved in mortgage. Yeah. So that, that's, that's how we were implemented across those two divisions.

Great. So here's one of my favorite questions that I like to ask our customers especially, especially customers that are very successful with us like yourself. The obvious cost savings is a no brainer for everybody. It's why people sign up with True typically. But there is a difference to the process, right? TRUV is a consumer permissioned solution, meaning the borrower is authenticating through our interface to their payroll provider. We've mapped 96% of all adult working of the adult working population. In the United States between employers and their payroll providers. And that includes gigs, benefits. All the different Edge cases as well, they can verify through Troof. But the key difference is it's consumer permission, meaning the borrower logs into their payroll provider. TRU pulls that document and they give permission, and True pulls those documents directly into the credit unions. Los pos. That's how the. The system works, which is fundamentally different from an instant database where behind the scenes, someone's just pressing a button and there's a hit or there's not. Those typically have conversion rates of about 30, 35%. Something in those realms, and ours are a little bit north of that because. Because, excuse me. Especially if it's implemented really well, like. Like Austin has done at afcu. For several different reasons, our conversion is higher, but primarily it's because we have 96% coverage of the adult working population in the United States. So let's talk about how you got the organization to pivot, to trove and to adopt the product. You want to talk a little bit about that for your team, for your underwriters, loan officers?

Yeah, of course. Thank you. Yeah. When we rolled out Truman Phases and went consumer, and then we went home equity, and then we went to mortgage, the adoption for anyone who works with originators was clunky and not on True's part, but on the originators changing their workflow. Right. They thought it was another item for them to handle. They wanted to handle all the communication with the member and didn't like the change or the new. What they saw at the time when we rolled out, just one more thing for them to accomplish. So the rollout was not as successful as I wanted it to be. So what we did is we made some changes. We have a junior processing team that does a lot of ordering, title, evidence of insurance, you know, chasing down documents, things like that. So we put that into their hands. And what has happened is that they will send out a text notification to the member letting them know that the true email will be on the way for them to verify their employment, so that that barrier has already been broken. The member knows that the email is on its way. They've been communicated. They get the reason why it's important the junior processors explain that. And so once we tweaked out a little bit and had them, you know, really run point on. On True conversion, John, from 3035 to 60, 65. So it's been a huge win for us. And then, you know, the originators now think it's great. But, yeah, the Rollout was, you know, like I said, a little clunky, but mostly on our part before we made those tweaks and changes.

I love it. You know, one of the things I love is that you really own kind of the, the process. You say, this is how our process is going to work. And you've done that by testing and seeing what, and seeing what works and what doesn't work. And you roll that across the whole organization as opposed to letting everybody just kind of choose their own adventure. I think for most technology, that's typically how you get the highest adoption and success. Would you agree with that?

Yes, I would, very much so.

Awesome. Well, talk to me about onboarding. Like, when you got started, how's the true team? Like, you know, how was the onboarding process?

The onboarding process from, you know, it. I'll be, you know, up front, it wasn't, it wasn't my baby. I wasn't involved in, you know, the contracts like I usually do with most of my vendors. But it was smooth because we rolled it out. Like I said, in consumer. So they did most of the heavy lifting with the, you know, the initial onboarding. And then they looped in myself and my management team into what we wanted the process to look like in mortgage and in home equity. So they were very open to ideas. They were, you know, very flexible. We want, you know, we want this, we want that. Very nimble to adjust to the, the needs that America first had. So, yeah, the onboarding to me was, was a real success.

So everybody understands what, what I, what you're. You're talking about right now, Austin. We have different products for different parts of the business for depositories. We have a product for direct deposit switching. So a retail side or another side of the business might want to make a member's paycheck deposit into their primary checking account as the primary checking account. And our technology, it's very similar technology that we use for verification of income and employment and verification of assets. We can do use the same technology to have the borrower very seamlessly, in a matter of a couple clicks, make their bank the primary deposit. And it's very successful. So if you're interested, you can, you can schedule a demo on the, on the website and we'll show you, give you an overview on what that would look like for your credit union. So let's talk about a little bit about the results we've covered. I think the majority of the story here, but what I think most folks here on the call are interested in hearing are some of the results. Because you have had really great results, correct?

Yeah. So, you know, we're a fanny shop, so we don't do a lot of Freddie transactions. But, you know, the D1C day one certainty was a big win with True. We were, it was. We weren't getting enough of them in our old format and workflow. So True's really helped us with Day one Certainty. And like I mentioned, I actually checked the stats right before I came in, Richard, and we hit 65 in Octo October. 65% conversion. So that I, I'm over the moon about that. I'm ecstatic. It's a great number. And then the cost savings alone, you know, the, the number we keep throwing out there is 80% and that that's accurate. And what's also great is that it's the quick turn, it's an easy interface for the member and it does provide accurate data. Accurate data we found relative to some of the other vendors or processes that we use.

Awesome. Thank you for that. One thing I'll let everybody know is that we only charge when you get a successful verification. That's how True works. So like you send a verification to the borrower, the borrower verifies their, their employment and income, it comes back successfully with the documents. You need that success not. And a lot of other companies you'll talk to in the space will define verification. For example, in a consumer permission solution, as in they logged into their payroll provider, they had a successful connection. That's not success as we define it. You guys need the documents to be able to do the loan. So if the documents don't come back successfully, then it doesn't count as a conversion and you don't get charged as well. So that's how we define it. And I think the other important note that if anybody's evaluating a solution like TRUV is hey, we don't charge for re verifications as well. If the login credentials are persistent, meaning the first time they log in, if those credentials are still persistent with the payroll provider 10 days before close, you can just press a button and verify the verification of employment. It's pretty important. And we don't charge for that. So I think the, you know, the last thing I just ask you if you've got a. Let's just imagine you've got like, you know, a handful of. We've got a nice audience here. If. Let's imagine a lot of them are at credit unions in a similar seat or a similar role and you've got an audience of your peers here, what would you say to them if they're, you know, they haven't yet taken on a consumer permission solution? Maybe they're looking around right now and sitting on the fence. What would you, what would you say?

I would say to that if the tech is there and the partner is right, you should do it right. I work with a lot of vendors in mortgage and home equity and I've got great partners, so. So partners. True has been a great partner, but like I said, if the tech exists, you should utilize it. You know, I done E closings, closing disclosures, AI underwriting, things like that to automate the. And what you really can quantify is you, you know, be above and beyond the cost savings is really the reduced days to close. We shaved. We were at 31 days. Now we've shaved down to about 27, 26 approximately, depending upon the, you know, the transaction type. So I'd really say to partner with, with True would be. Would be a nice win for your credit union. It makes a lot of sense and you can use it across all platforms. So it's a great thing to explore.

27 days to close is something to be very proud of. That's definitely well below the average national average. So that's. That's winning for sure. I, I actually hear from a lot of credit unions I speak with that they're embarrassed to say that they have a very long number of days to close. So, you know, congratulations to you and your whole team. Look, that's the. We've covered everything that we came here to cover. Austin, I want to thank you very much for joining. If anybody has any questions, we'll give it like 30 seconds, throw them in the chat. Happy to answer your questions, but now's the time if you have them. Thanks a lot, Austin. Appreciate it.

You're so welcome. My pleasure.

All right, well, then, doesn't look like we have any questions. I'm going to wrap this up, everybody. You have yourself a fantastic day and see you on the next time. See you.