Last year, we funded close to $3 billion through indirect, and we are now the top credit union on the CUDL platform. That doesn't happen by chance or by luck. That happens with strong collaboration and trust like we have with Origence. My name is Megan Olsen. I work with America First Credit Union. I am the Vice President over consumer underwriting and servicing. We currently are at a $23 billion asset size and we have a 1.5 million membership base. America First Lending Program, we have been in the indirect space for twenty years and that has always been a strong portion of our consumer lending portfolio. Our three largest lending states are Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. We offer a range of products from auto loans to Visa credit cards, power sports, UTVs. We do all types of lending within that consumer lending space. As America First has grown into other states, CUDL has played a huge role in that success. Since going live with indirect lending, CUDL has been our exclusive partner for indirect lending. As we've gone into other states where CUDL has not been as prominent as other platforms, it has been a joint effort between America First and CUDL together going into dealerships, making them aware of the platform and the benefits of using CUDL and that has helped us grow in those states and grow our presence within indirect lending in those states where initially CUDL wasn't as prominent. Working with CUDL, we were able to add over 250 new dealers to the CUDL platform between the states of Idaho and Montana. Using the CUDL platform has significantly helped our look-to-book expectations and manage those expectations with the dealer network. America First continues to have large loan growth goals. A way that CUDL has helped us accomplish those goals is by implementing technologies like DPA that have made us faster and more efficient in funding. We funded last year roughly 91,000 applications for a total annual dollar amount of $2.9 billion. Before turning on document processing automation, our funding process was very chaotic. We do business with a range of anywhere from 1200 - 1500 dealers depending on the month and every single one of those dealers likes to fund a different way. We would get documents in the wrong order, we would get them upside down, they would be all over in regards to that which made our funders life that much harder. DPA was able to take that at a seamless process and now put it in a way that works best for us and has made our processing and funding so much more seamless, so much easier. We now have the documents in the order that we want. We have the documents pulled out of that package in the way that we want them pulled out. And with that, we have seen a 30% individual efficiency increase in our funding team. One of our funders had quit before we turned on document processing automation and we just barely brought her back on within our group and she has said what a night and day difference it was and that was a personal testimonial for how she saw and how in her eyes she was able to see that difference between pre DPA and then after DPA. After we went live with document processing automation, it was a very generic set of rules. We did not know really what we wanted at the time because this was a new product, it was new technology that we all were getting used to. So after we refined those rules, working with Origence and the product team to say, this is how America first funds. This is really what we need in order to get those efficiency gains. That was where we were able to make tweaks to the DPA summary and even make suggestions to Origence to say, this would be really beneficial to have. And they were able to implement based off of my team's suggestions that not only helped us at America First, but also other credit unions as well. We knew that at funding, we needed automation and in order to get that, we were going to have to figure out a solution. document processing automation definitely was that solution. So the way that we implemented document processing automation within indirect was we decided that we were going to charge a fee at the time of funding. That decision came about within the organization at a very high level and it was not something that anyone in the organization took lightly. This was the big decision. This was not something that America First had ever done in in the indirect space before. We knew that in certain markets that we were currently in, a fee was common, but in our biggest markets, the fee was not very common for a credit union to charge. The net income that we are gaining by the time we take out the fee that's being charged for DPA and the income that we're receiving from the fee that we're charging at the time of funding is $7.6 million dollars annually. Lending technology is definitely heading more towards everything needs to be faster and more accurate. This has been a major topic of discussion at America First and how do we implement more automation within our lending processes. Origence has been a great partner as we are navigating these changes, as they are constantly working with us, taking feedback from us on how to implement those changes within their structure to help us succeed better as a credit union.
