Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - (Page 20) TECHNOLOGY Settlement Portal Specialist Seeks Credit Unions for 2009 By MARC RAPPORT GLEN BURNIE, Md. — Ben Renko III is looking for a few good credit unions. Really, just a few, maybe one a year, to use his company’s portal solution for vendor management. Renko is president and chief technology officer of InterActData, developer of a middleware solution named vmcSelect that Renko said “changes how a lender interacts with vendor choices–appraisal, closing, title, flood–through accountability and control.” InterActData (www.interactdata.net) was created and vmcSelect was launched as offshoots of the Empower vendor management solution and Data Search Inc. (www.data-search.com), a settlement services specialist founded in 1978 by Renko’s father. In 1995, Data Search developed its Empower Webbased application, and the parent company now is licensed as a title insurer in 30 states and provides its own title management and related services to more than 10,000 customers nationwide, the younger Renko said. “We think this brings a lot of value,” Renko said, adding that he believes his business model does, too. “Credit unions typically use a number of appraisers and title companies, and with us, they can do that at no expense,” he said. “None of our lenders pay us to use our service. They’re all transaction fees paid by the vendors.” That’s music to the ears of one Renko client, loan officer April Stoner at $15 million Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission FCU in Laurel, Md. She said her 2,500-member credit union has been using the Empower solution for about a year and it “saves us a tremendous amount of time and costs our members about half of what a settlement used to with our old system.” She said she’s able to pull together complete closing packages in-house now for her equity loans and that deeds that used to take up to eight or 10 months to get filed when handled by mail now take only a day or two. “I do it all from my computer,” Stoner said. “I know where everything is every step of the way. In fact, as far as getting documents back, it’s sometimes even a little overboard, but I’d rather have too much than not enough.” Stoner said she uses Data Search’s title and other services as well as its vendor management tools, but Renko noted that that’s not a requirement. “If you currently have 10 appraisal companies, eight title providers, three AVM and four flood providers, that’s 25 possibilities for ordering and tracking orders, 27 Web sites, user names, passwords and fax numbers,” he said. “Using vmcSelect, you have a single interface for all your vendors, regardless of their technology or the method they choose to communicate,” Renko said. The portal uses XML and other middleware technology to interface with various loan origination and message delivery systems, and it comes with human beings, too. Renko said he and his staff work closely with their clients to customize the solution to fit their needs–such “In 2005 years later, we completed development of vmcSelect. It was our goal at the time to add a single client each year, each being from a different lending sector,” said Renko, who also serves as president of DataSearch. “We currently have as active clients, a wholesale lender, an REO department of a finance company, a national finance company and a large regional bank,” he said. “2009 is our target year to add a credit union to that client portfolio.” InterActData, which works out of the same building as Data Search Inc., has a staff of six while the bigger company has about 55, Renko said. The younger firm acts as a consultancy and custom developer, a role which sprung from a customized engagement with American General Finance, Renko said. “We’re smaller, we don’t outsource our work and we don’t sell you a solution out of the box that may meet your needs 80% of the time but not all the time,” he said. “We do our projects one at a time, and the team that goes in and implements the solution are the same people who developed it in the first place.” as using its rules engine to create a rotating list of appraisers to be used at a community bank in southern Virginia, or doling out the work to appraisers by percentages at 1,800-branch BB&T. There are seven users of vmcSelect right now and Renko said only one or two new clients a year can be accommodated because of the time involved in the customized deployment. No two organizations are alike, “and I always tell our people that we’re in this for long-term relationships with our clients, not short-term profits,” Renko said. “We’re not just selling a quarter-million dollar piece of software and walking away. Our very business model creates a very high incentive for us to get better.” “There are no long-term contracts for vmcSelect. You can walk away from us at anytime for no expense. And it would only take 10 or 15 minutes to switch to another vendor.” —mrapport@cutimes.com Teres Solutions Integrates Lending Platform With LSI Support AUSTIN, Texas — Teres Solutions said its automated lending platforms are now integrated with the member support center operated by Lending Solutions Inc. The integration allows LSI loan officers to provide 24/7 outsourced underwriting support to the 198 credit unions and other financial services providers that use Teres’ SAIL solutions for direct and indirect lending. The SAIL platform can provide automated decisions on a certain percentage of applications, but the balance of these loans must be underwritten manually. Now, a specialist at LSI can be notified of a pending application in the system and provide a decision on the application within minutes. LSI’s own lending platform also now interfaces with the SAIL platform, enabling the transmittal of applications directly to a credit union’s sys- tem, the companies said. “By responding to these indirect applications immediately, the member is taken ‘off the market’ and the credit union secures more loan business from the dealer,” said Jeff Frantz, senior vice president of corporate development at LSI, which serves more than 300 credit unions and other lenders from its headquarters in Elgin, Ill. “It’s a simple and elegant solution to the increasingly complex lending underwriting process,” said Tim Kelly, CEO of Teres Solutions in Austin. —mrapport@cutimes.com CorePROFIT Solutions Reports Five Signings, Two Re-Signings WEST CHESTER, Pa. — CorePROFIT Solutions Inc. said it has signed five new users of its profitability solutions and renewed agreements with two more. The new clients are the $5.0 billion American Airlines Federal Credit Union of Fort Worth, the $1.8 billion Affinity FCU of Basking Ridge, N.J., the $698 million FirstMark CU of San Antonio, and a pair of banks, the $5.5 billion Central Pacific Bank of Honolulu, and the $2 billion Univest Bank of Souderton, Pa. Renewing their contracts are the $3.4 billion ESL FCU of Rochester, N.Y., and the $1.1 billion Citadel FCU of Thorndale, Pa. CorePROFIT provides seven different hosted, behavior-based costing and profitability solutions designed to help financial institutions simplify “the process of defining, developing, reporting and analyzing all facets of member-level profitability, efficiencies and improve net income,” said the company’s chief operating officer, Larry Tankeloff. —mrapport@cutimes.com 20 February 18, 2009 N cutimes.com Credit Union Times http://www.interactdata.net http://www.data-search.com http://www.cutimes.com
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 Table of Contents Psst… Hear About the Agency? Nine Iowa CUs Offer IDAs Microlender Plants Seeds in N.C. Missouri Group Gives Back Mica on CU Uncertainties Price of Alternative Capital Love Named NCUA Director News Briefs National PACs Reached Record Editor-in-Chief Column Looking Back Guess Opinion Letters to the Editor Special Report: Technology People Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 (Page 1) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 (Page 2) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 (Page 3) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Table of Contents (Page 4) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Table of Contents (Page 5) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Nine Iowa CUs Offer IDAs (Page 6) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Nine Iowa CUs Offer IDAs (Page 7) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Microlender Plants Seeds in N.C. (Page 8) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Missouri Group Gives Back (Page 9) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Price of Alternative Capital (Page 10) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Love Named NCUA Director (Page 11) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - News Briefs (Page 12) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - National PACs Reached Record (Page 13) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Looking Back (Page 14) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Looking Back (Page 15) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Letters to the Editor (Page 16) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Letters to the Editor (Page 17) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Special Report: Technology (Page 18) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Special Report: Technology (Page 19) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Special Report: Technology (Page 20) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Special Report: Technology (Page 21) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Special Report: Technology (Page 22) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Special Report: Technology (Page 23) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - Special Report: Technology (Page 24) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - People (Page 25) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - People (Page 26) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - People (Page 27) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - People (Page 28) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - People (Page 29) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - People (Page 30) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - People (Page 31) Credit Union Times - February 18, 2009 - People (Page 32)
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