This article was written by Frank Gargano for American Banker. Read the article here.
Carrie Jenkins has been working to improve the way reports are generated at Centra Credit Union in Columbus, Indiana.
“When I joined Centra [five years ago], the business analytics department didn’t exist, and to generate a report of any kind you had to have our chief information officer build one,” said Jenkins, who is currently assistant vice president of business analytics for Centra. “Now, we’ve adopted so many database-oriented solutions that we can’t maintain all the physical servers needed to support them all.”
The $2 billion-asset credit union has partnered with Tampa, Florida-based Trellance to develop a data warehouse in which it will store information about member transaction behavior on the fintech’s M360 analytics platform. This, the credit union’s leaders hope, will reduce the reporting stress placed on the credit union’s core platform and free up IT resources such as personnel and digital storage for use elsewhere.
Centra is part of a growing number of credit unions looking to cloud providers for lower-cost and lower-maintenance software not only to improve preexisting functions, but quickly develop and adopt new products and services.
For example, 41% of credit unions recently surveyed by Cornerstone Advisors said they have already deployed cloud-computing technology, and 24% said they were poised to do so.
Currently, the credit union is using a version of Trellance’s software that runs on-site. It is working with the company to integrate M360 with its core platform, DNA from Fiserv, which will allow a full move to the cloud platform.
