By Suzanne Savage
Rapidly changing technology, growing product complexity, and greater requirements for security and compliance have created product and service needs that many credit unions can no longer fill with in-house systems and staff. This growing need for product and operational function specialization has created many opportunities for third party providers to offer solutions to credit unions. With robust product and services available ‘off-the-shelf’, CUs now offer members a sophisticated product set that rivals banking competitors. Internal operations are now managed in ways that require far less internal expertise.
Credit unions constantly grapple with outsourcing decisions across all products lines including lending, collections, home banking, core systems, and payments. Many internal operations functions are also outsourced to third parties in the human resource, IT, and marketing departments. While traditionally viewed as a way to cut costs, today, outsourcing provides the primary way CUs acquire functionality or expertise not available in-house.
