How a growing credit union partnered with PerformLine to reduce compliance review time by 86% and increase speed to market

About the Client

Over 70 years ago, several original members each contributed $5 to create this credit union.

Today, that credit union has members all over the world and manages more than $7.5 billion in assets, but the vision of those original members remains in place: a credit union that transforms its members lives, and strengthens the communities in which they live. The credit union remains grounded in the principles it crafted in 1951, and today a $5 deposit is still all that is required for membership.  

Business Challenges

As the capital that the credit union manages grew from that initial $55 to over $7 billion, so did the amount of marketing collateral produced. This organization creates and reviews thousands of pieces of marketing monthly, across a wide variety of types, like direct mailers, banners, posters, and more.

Reviewing all of those assets manually was onerous. The marketing team would send the compliance team a document, and the compliance team would review the document based on a checklist and make edits. Those edits would get sent back to the marketing team, and then the marketing team would implement the edits and send the document back for another manual review.

All told, reviewing and editing a single document could take up to a week.

PerformLine Solutions

The credit union realized they needed to automate their review process to increase efficiency and reduce manual efforts. Their team worked with the PerformLine implementation team to set up rulebooks tailored to their unique needs, and instituted workflows for automated compliance reviews of their documents. The active role the credit union took in the implementation process helped to ensure that the new rules met their strict compliance standards, and the new workflows created a friction-free way to review documents.

As a result, PerformLine was able to help greatly reduce the amount of time it takes the credit union to review and remediate a document—what once took a week can now be done in an average of a day.

Assets Monitored

This credit union produces not just a lot of marketing assets, but a lot of different types of assets, like direct mailers, banners, posters, and more. During the asset monitoring phase, PerformLine demonstrated the capacity to handle the full variety of marketing materials that will be monitored.

Rule Set-Up

PerformLine and the credit union worked together to create a custom rulebook that fit the credit union’s unique needs. The starting guidelines were based on the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) rules and regulations. From there, the credit union team and the PerformLine specialist worked in tandem to make sure that outgoing documents reflected the credit union's internal standards as well as all applicable regulatory requirements.

Process Audit

In the Process Audit phase, PerformLine analyzed existing workflows and worked with the team to bucket their assets for the rulebook application. This step combines the automation capabilities of PerformLine with the credit union's existing institutional knowledge, making certain that everybody is on the same page when it comes to what process changes are occurring and why.

Early Wins

A part of PerformLine’s comprehensive onboarding is identifying early successes that serve as a foundation for an elite compliance program.

A few of the early wins that the organization was able to achieve with PerformLine during the implementation process were:

• Establishing a standard scoring rulebook for all documents
• Ensuring review of  the wide variety of documents they produce
• Streamlining manual processes
• Creating workflows for team collaboration
• Ensuring the efficiency of the automated process

The Results

A Significantly Faster Review Process

The document review and approval process that would have taken a week in the past can now be completed in a single day, resulting in a 86% reduction in overall marketing review time. That makes the entire team more efficient and gives them the bandwidth to focus on continuing the company’s impressive growth. 

A Single Point of Truth

While each line of business has its own needs, all of them must also adhere to the high standards of the organization as a whole. PerformLine’s implementation ensures that while the specific needs of each line of business are taken into account, those requirements all funnel upwards into a cohesive set of rulebooks and processes for the entire compliance program. 

The Company is Proactively Prepared for Regulatory Scrutiny

As the credit union nears $10 billion in assets under their management, they are prepared for the additional scrutiny that milestone brings. The client is proactively addressing marketing complia