ATLANTA — Equifax recently launched two products designed to improve and speed decision-making and loan processing for financial institutions.
With InterConnect Direct(TM), the company has launched an account origination, risk decisioning and cross-selling solution for mid-sized banks and credit unions. Equifax's credit risk management and lending solutions are used by more than 30 of the top 50 banks and InterConnect Direct will allow mid-sized financial institutions to utilize the InterConnect platform to access enhanced decisioning capabilities.
InterConnect Direct enables institutions to make real-time account origination and risk decisions by automating key business processes and providing integration with data from Equifax, third-party sources and internal databases. According to Equifax, this solution can help banks and credit unions make consistent credit decisions across all sales channels, verify customer identity and credit history to reduce fraud, edit business rules and capture cross- sell opportunities.
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"It's all done in real time and it's multi-channel," explained Laurie Hood, vice president of product management for Equifax Enabling Technologies. "In the smaller institutions it's like, 'Well, we only have a handful of people that make the decisions.' You don't want to lack consistency. You want to ensure that someone coming in online and someone coming in through the branch are being handled the same way. It also takes the guesswork out of decisioning. We see a lot of our customers who have first generation software where a lot of the decisioning was left up to the individual who was dealing with the customer. What happens if that person leaves or is inaccessible? InterConnect Direct removes potential inconsistencies from personal decisions." The suite also possesses front-end integration with fraud products, Hood added, since fraud and decisioning kind of go "hand-in-hand."
"You obviously don't want to pull extensive data sources and make a decision on someone who is a fraudster," Hood said. "If you're not using fraud tools the bank down the street most certainly is and they'll get all of the people that walk out your door looking for more security."
Decisioning is not the only process that Equifax has focused on streamlining. Through the introduction of APPRO(R) the company now offers a single platform for end-to-end consumer and business loan processing.
APPRO automates the various phases of loan processing including data acquisition and decisioning through a range of post-approval functions such as funding, generating documents and interfacing to a host system. The APPRO solution enables lenders to tailor systems for changing environments, helps enforce credit policy compliance and promotes opportunities.
"Having consumer and business on the same platform, the real advantages are that it automates cross-sell opportunities," said Philip Elwyn, vice president of marketing and sales for Equifax Enabling Technologies. "A businessman that wants a business loan can be cross-sold consumer products and vice versa. In the past it had to go across departments and across systems and a real concerted marketing effort would have to be utilized."
Since APPRO is a browser-based solution, it can be accessed anytime, anywhere and supports an unlimited number of users. It includes management reporting across product lines and produces accurate reports for both reporting and auditing purposes.
The system can be deployed and go live in a couple of weeks depending on an institution's needs.
"You have to factor in the training and configuration needed by customers," Elwyn explained. "It depends on the complexity of their loan policy and what they wish to accomplish. Are they offering one product to their members or is 10 or 12 with different criteria behind each? Different workflow and approval processes are also considered. But the system is designed to automate processes and tasks wherever possible." –[email protected]
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