Delta Community Credit Union sends VOIE conversion soaring with Argyle at the top of its verification waterfall
Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Delta Community Credit Union (Delta Community) began serving Delta Airlines employees nearly 85 years ago and has evolved to become one of America’s top community-based credit unions. With $8.6 billion in assets (source) and over 1,300 employees, Delta Community operates out of 32 branch offices and serves more than 500,000 members, making it the largest credit union in Georgia and one of the 35 largest credit unions in the United States. It primarily serves residents in 16 Atlanta metro-area counties as well as employees of Delta Airlines, Chick-fil-A, RaceTrac, and UPS. Delta Community is a full-service financial institution dedicated to providing its members with honest value, superior service and trusted advice. Its offerings include commercial loans, consumer loans, conventional and second mortgages, and many more.
Challenge
When Delta Community discovered that one of its primary verification of income and employment (VOIE) providers couldn’t access certain payroll records, it knew it needed to find an alternative to place at the top of its verification waterfall. The credit union already had fallback verification options, but each came with its own drawbacks: they were expensive, required manual tasks, or did not integrate smoothly with Delta Community’s mortgage point-of-sale system, delaying the loan application process and making it difficult for members to submit the required documentation. Delta Community needed a solution that maintained the exceptional experience its members expected while delivering complete and accurate verification of VOIE data.
“If we can’t verify income and employment easily, efficiently, and economically, that’s an issue,” said Delta Community Vice President of Residential Lending Kathy Weber. “We needed to find a way to conduct VOIE that both played well with ICE’s Encompass LOS and also delivered a smooth home buying process for our members, all at a reasonable price.”
Solution
Shortly after Delta Community began its search for a better VOIE solution, Cherie Rood, an industry consultant and fellow member of the Mortgage Bankers Association of Georgia, recommended Argyle. Once Delta Community met with the Argyle team, it was clear the credit union had found its ideal VOIE service provider.
“After demoing Argyle, we knew it was the best option to provide an outstanding member experience,” said Weber. “We also predicted significant cost savings and higher conversion rates, thanks to Argyle’s ability to access a wide range of payroll data.”
Argyle is faster than manual verification and more cost-effective than legacy verification databases. Among next-generation, consumer-permissioned VOIE platforms, Argyle stands out for its broad network covering over 220 million U.S. consumers and 96% of the Fortune 1000. Argyle is also known for its intuitive borrower verification experience, which enables industry-leading VOIE conversion through instant retrieval of pay stubs and W-2s and by furnishing credit unions with detailed information such as shift-by-shift earnings.
Delta Community was operating under a strict timeline when it began rolling out Argyle. Argyle built and executed a custom implementation plan focused on the credit union’s requirements and pain points, working with the credit union’s information security team to ensure everything met the standards Delta Community requires of its vendors.
“[The Argyle team] did an outstanding job, we were incredibly impressed,” said Weber. “They weren’t pushy. They listened to our concerns and communicated progress and expectations very clearly.”
Along with the efficient implementation process, Argyle provided training and check-ins to help Delta Community’s loan team integrate the new VOIE system into their workflows.
“They’ve done a great job helping us explain to our members and LOs how this works,” said Weber. “I am continually impressed by the expertise and professionalism the Argyle team displays.”
Outcome
Successful verification more than 60% of the time
Delta Community receives full employment and income verification for 3 out of 5 members (61%) who are presented with the opportunity to use Argyle. This conversion rate minimizes the number of applications that have to be routed to more expensive, less efficient fallback options. And because Argyle delivers pay stubs and W-2s, members don’t have to spend their time hunting down and submitting those documents.
“The conversion rate we’re getting with Argyle is well above industry standard,” said Weber. “Having a more reliable path to the accurate, recent data we need to make an informed underwriting decision empowers our loan team to focus on the member experience, instead of the paper chase, manual data entry and constant re-checking.”
Delivered excellent member experiences
Delta Community is dedicated to providing premiere services its members can trust. This year, in its annual member survey conducted through Raddon Financial, Delta Community earned a record-high Net Promoter Score® of 80 — a significant achievement in the financial services industry where the average NPS is 34. Technology plays a role in Delta Community’s ability to engender this exceptional level of member loyalty.
“There are many factors that play a part in member satisfaction,” said Weber. “Argyle’s ease of use and high success made it an important piece of our overall mortgage origination services—one element assessed by Raddon. It makes the process of verification much simpler for our members, as we can connect with their payroll accounts instead of having them hunt down every piece of documentation we need.”
Experienced greater data integrity
Argyle provides VOIE services by connecting directly with payroll platforms to deliver real-time, consumer-permissioned data. As a result, Delta Community receives trustworthy data directly from the source, helping to prevent fraud and identify potential issues earlier in the application process.
“Argyle helps us reduce the risk of employment verification fraud,” said Weber. “Not all of our members opt in, but we know we can trust the data of the ones that do.”
Reduced per-borrower verification costs by $39
In its first four months using Argyle, Delta Community saved an average of $39 on verification costs per member who opted in to Argyle.
“With origination costs constantly rising, any savings we can find are substantial. We’ve saved more than ten thousand dollars on verifications in just four months,” said Weber.
Weber attributes some of these savings to Argyle’s longer reverification period. Pre-close reverifications often cost as much as the original VOIE order, and Argyle allows Delta Community to reverify income and employment for up to 90 days at no additional cost.
“We always run a final verification a few days before closing,” said Weber. “Argyle really empowers our loan teams to run that check as often as necessary during the active window, reducing the cost of reverifying. In the long run, we expect we will see substantial savings on our verifications just from that, let alone the lower overall costs.”
