The community-owned bank, Capital Credit Union, has adopted the award-winning Auto Decision Platform (ADP) by LendingMetrics to enhance their credit decisioning process, an initiative reflecting their commitment to technological advancement while keeping the community at the heart of their efforts.
Established over 35 years ago, the people-first lenders now aim to transform into a credit union capable of competing with major high street banks. With assets totalling approximately £45m, they already stand as a significant player in the UK credit union sector and have ambitious growth plans. They are enthusiastic about making affordable credit accessible throughout East Scotland with a range of ethical financial services.
The challenge
Capital Credit Union (CCU) found their loan decision time hindered their ability to process more applications and, consequently, serve more customers. And so, LendingMetrics was chosen as a strategic partner to tackle these challenges and increase their loan volumes without employing additional staff or extending manual processes. Previously, they had a sizeable loans team, required to process applications, but with the implementation of ADP, resources were effectively freed up enabling the staff to focus on more productive and customer-focused aspects of the business.
The speed and automation of our member onboarding process has vastly improved, enhancing our team’s productivity and allowing us to make decisions in a fast and compliant manner.
Capital Credit Union now serves over 30,000 members, encompassing a broad spectrum of financial situations and challenges. The credit union viewed ADP as an opportunity to enhance their traditional processes and transition sustainably to a level that would support their growth ambitions. Over recent months, we have worked closely with them to configure our platform to their specific needs, enabling them to offer clients more options for their lending propositions and assist them in further increasing their loan volumes.
The solution
From the initial business case to project management, we have assisted Capital Credit Union in integrating our automated decision-making solution. Since implementing ADP, the credit union has seen a 75% improvement in their time to decision, allowing them to sustain double the loan volumes without needing additional underwriters. Furthermore, as ADP is inherently consistent and data-driven, CCU can reduce ‘grey areas’ in their credit policy and process thousands of applications each month, improving the dependability of decision making. In addition to these operational benefits, ADP significantly aids CCU in meeting The FCA’s Consumer Duty regulations. The platform allows CCU to control the core rules of the decision engine and make amendments in line with regulatory requirements, ensuring they are lending responsibly and delivering good outcomes for their customers. By leveraging automated decisioning software into their business processes, CCU has been able to free up staffing and focus on more strategic, high-impact projects, leading to some exciting developments.
We are extremely pleased with the results we have achieved from LendingMetrics’ Auto Decision Platform (ADP).The solution has enabled the credit union to create and manipulate decisioning logic on demand, delivering comprehensive, automated decisions through direct interaction with our members.
Recently, Capital Credit Union launched their 'Fair Fan Finance' scheme, enabling Scottish sports clubs to offer low-cost season ticket loans to their fans or members. This solution is free to set up for the sports clubs, allowing fans to pay for their season ticket/membership in monthly instalments with no hidden charges or repayment penalties. Fans who choose this finance option also become members of the credit union, giving them access to a range of benefits and products including savings, loans, and mortgages. This scheme effectively reduces the financial pressures on sports fans caused by the cost-of-living crisis, providing an affordable alternative to credit cards and high-interest providers. It also reduces the burden on sports clubs chasing up outstanding payments, which can be time-consuming and resource intensive. During the 2023/24 football season, over 1200 Hibernian F.C. season tickets were purchased through Capital Credit Union. CCU currently provides Fair Fan Finance to Hibernian F.C., Dunfermline Athletic F.C., St Johnstone F.C., St Mirren F.C., Ross County F.C., and Scottish Golf. These developments were facilitated by the implementation of ADP, which provides the scalability and consistency necessary to provide such innovative products and services.
ADP is a scalable solution that grows with you. With the combined efforts of Capital Credit Union’s in-house team and our ADP solution, CCU has been able to scale their business exponentially without increasing overheads. In recent news, Capital Credit Union’s loan book has exceeded £25m for the first time and they expect a growth figure of £6m in the coming year. We are fully backing Capital Credit Union in their journey and strive to further assist them with our Adaptive Risk Consultancy (ARC) team, who exist to support new and current clients with credit risk consultancy beyond the support offered during the ADP implementation, in line with our commitment to innovation and customer-centric solutions.
The future
With a maximum population potential of 3 million, Capital Credit Union strives to break into new markets and better serve the Scottish community. Since 2022, CCU has gained over 5,500 new members, the ADP solution has enabled them to attract more members by providing a frictionless and expedited process for those applying for a loan.
By leveraging the strengths of real-time decisioning, CCU aims to continue to improve their customer experience by offering more features and products. Moving forward, our ARC team will assist Capital Credit Union by providing analytical support to enhance their decision processes enabling them to make more data-driven decisions through the actionable insights provided by ADP. We will offer training and guidance on ADP and credit risk, analyse and design both existing and bespoke scorecards, and support any decision engine changes.
Providing they can draw in sufficient savings to support lending; Capital Credit Union anticipates becoming a £50m plus organisation within the next three years and we will continue to support their business operations.
