Should Your Credit Union Outsource Its Statements?

Bank operations across the country have increasingly depended on outsourcing as the company's focus moves more toward managing core operations. As a credit union, issuing statements is one of your most important business functions. However, the time and resources required to issue statements might exceed what you're able to handle yourself. Fortunately, printing and issuing account statements is one business function that you can outsource. When considering whether or not to take advantage of statement outsourcing, here are a few points to consider.

What are your pain points?

Change is commonly born of need, so examining your current challenges might help you to make your outsourcing decisions. Are you currently paying too much for printing materials and manpower? How is this costing you in other areas? If you have even a basic knowledge of bank operations, then you know that regularly having to put out fires takes time of away from the development and implementation of systems that would prevent such fires. However, prioritization can be messy business. When considering something as essential and sensitive as your customer communications, you mustn't be in too big of a hurry to implement a new system. This pain point may motivate you to investigate alternatives, but it's wise not to rush into a decision before you've done a good job of investigating.

What have you outsourced before?

Consider the tasks that you currently outsource, and how that is working out for your credit union. How is communication between your credit union and the outsourcing company? Do you benefit from the arrangement? Also, your current outsourcing provider one that can also handle outsourced statements? If not, could they recommend someone who could?

How Much Money Will Outsourcing Save Us?

This question gets to the heart of our major motivation for outsourcing. Crunching budget numbers is nothing new to credit union operations, and things become tighter and tighter in this area as time passes. With increased dependence on technology, uncertain postage costs, and increasing compliance and regulation fees, credit unions are faced with the challenge of increasing their efficiency. Fortunately, outsourcing is usually a matter not of if it can save the credit union money, but how much it will save.

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