By W.B. King
With the intention of extending financial products and services to its nationwide member base, Teachers Federal Credit Union recently partnered with Corridor Platforms, adopting its financial decisioning tool.
“Their state-of-the-art decision intelligence platform is a perfect match for our goal of delivering personalized, efficient and risk-managed financial services,” Suresh Renganathan, Teachers FCU’s chief technology officer, told Finopotamus.
The Hauppauge, N.Y.-based credit union supports more than 470,000 members at 30 branch locations.
“We plan to utilize Corridor’s technology for real-time credit decision making, enhancing member experience, boosting operational efficiency, and ensuring stringent risk management and compliance – all of which are expected to drive our growth,” Renganathan added.
Which FI Has the Strongest Digital Services?
During the vendor vetting process, the Teachers FCU sought a real-time credit decision-making model that featured strong governance and compliance capabilities. The Paramus, N.J-based Corridor Platforms checked all the boxes, Renganathan offered.
“Its commitment to innovation and deep understanding of the unique challenges in the financial sector resonated with our objectives,” he continued. “Corridor’s team tailored their credit union solution to enable Teachers to achieve digital banking competitiveness quickly and cost-effectively. Corridor’s dedication to knowledge building and transfer to our team ensures we can master this core competency and excel in the digital age.”
Manish Gupta, CEO of Corridor Platforms, said the company is squarely focused on “helping mid-market financial institutions (FIs) upgrade respective core decisioning tech stacks by optimizing marketing and risk management processes, while providing rails for robust risk oversight that addresses compliance and regulatory requirements.”
Explaining that credit unions largely compete against Tier 1 banks and fintech digital lenders in their local market, Gupta said the credit union industry once had the advantage of a “loyal local membership base,” however, “this dynamic has shifted as members’ appetites for enhanced digital experiences have increased.” He continued: “Members are now comfortable maintaining multiple FI relationships to meet their needs, gravitating towards those with the strongest digital offerings.”
After Teachers FCU selected Corridor Platforms, Renganathan said the implementation process, which is underway and expected to take five to six months, is thus far efficient and streamlined. When this “first phase” is complete, all products, less mortgage, will be covered.
“We are working closely with Corridor Platforms to ensure smooth implementation. A crucial lesson learned is the importance of thorough due diligence in selecting a technology partner and involving all stakeholders early in the process, from IT to lending operations,” he said. “This ensures the solution meets the organization’s and its members' diverse needs.”
Gupta added the implementation process is in three phases: setup, train and transfer. “The initial setup and launch phase spans a period of four to six months. This stage involves configuring the end-to-end decisioning stack, establishing the data lake, and implementing decision analytics with preconfigured governance protocols.”
Collaborative Process and Anticipated Benefits
Teachers FCU’s IT department is playing an integral role in integrating Corridor Platform’s decision intelligence system, Renganathan said. This process requires collaboration in order to meet technical, security, and privacy standards as well as to train the IT team effectively, he added.
“We plan a beta testing phase, deploying the platform in a controlled environment to evaluate its performance, identify issues, and collect feedback,” he said. “This step is essential for ensuring the system's reliability and effectiveness before a full rollout.”
Gupta noted the service is a “plug-and-play operating model” that is flexible based on the “tech maturity” of the credit union. The decisioning stack, which is owned by the credit union, can be operated in-house or on a private cloud. The service connects to the credit union’s loan origination system (LOS) “with a light touch integration for the production workflow.” He continued: “For Teachers FCU, the Corridor decision stack was installed on-premise and connects to its LOS system for production decisioning.”
While Teachers FCU is in the process of implementation and training, Renganathan anticipates several success metrics. “This includes faster loan approvals, enhanced member service personalization, up to a 20% reduction in operational costs, and fewer risk management incidents. These benchmarks will be key to assessing the platform’s impact.”
For credit unions curious about return on investment (ROI), Gupta told Finopotamus that returns are delivered across the lifecycle of the contract, from customer acquisition to marketing and loss reduction.
“Corridor enables significant cost efficiencies by 20 to 30%, increases automated decisioning by 80% or more versus manual decisioning and establishes robust governance rails, ensuring transparency and traceability of version management and approval workflows,” he continued. “Credit unions can also increase their share of wallet by 1.3 to 1.6 times by leveraging real-time cross-selling strategies supported by bank internal data and relationship features.”
Improved Decision-Making Capabilities
Looking ahead, Renganathan believes the partnership will “unlock the full potential” of Teachers FCU’s data, which will, in turn, enable his team to “derive valuable insights and provide highly personalized and efficient financial services” to members.
“Technologically, it equips our team with advanced tools for better data utilization, improving service delivery and member satisfaction,” he said. “Employees will benefit from more streamlined processes and improved decision-making capabilities.”
When Finopotamus asked Renganathan what advice he has for credit unions looking to implement a similar service, he said clearly define long-term operational goals and ensure the solution aligns with strategic priorities.
“Engaging stakeholders across the organization is crucial to determine if the solution meets the institution's needs,” he said. “Leaders should also evaluate their technological infrastructure and data governance practices to ensure a successful decision intelligence platform implementation.”