AUSTIN, Texas – Two years after it was developed, the SAIL indirect lending solution from Teres Solutions Inc. is now in place in about 24 credit unions, where some are now processing more than $50 million in loans and leases each month, the company says. Austin-based Teres spent much of 2002 working with several credit unions developing the base SAIL Indirect platform and since then has been adding functions such as leasing, a Web-based portal to DealerTrack and a new interface with Auto Financial Group's DrivingSense software to provide balloon loan options. Interfacing with core processing platforms also is key to the product's success, and that was not a problem at El Paso Area Teachers FCU, says Laura Vera, vice president of lending at the $243 million CU. There, the SAIL Indirect system is integrated with an ULTRADATA core system and soon will be interfaced with the ubiquitous DealerTrack network, Vera says. "Our learning curve was minimal," she says. "We have three discounters, three buyers and two support staff now using it." The 52,000-member CU processed 11,926 loans in the system's first 13 months "and we expect to double our volume," Vera says. The browser-based SAIL platform eliminated having to "process applications three times on three different systems, and has automated the funding process, dealer call backs and pulls the credit bureau reports automatically, and has automated burdensome manual reporting," Vera says. As a result, processing time for loans has been reduced by 40% and the increased loan volume has been handled without adding staff, the EPAT vice president says. Meanwhile, at Velocity Credit Union in Austin, "the Teres solution made it possible for us to reduce indirect lending staff, but instead we chose to maintain staff levels and use the improved processing capacity to increase our loan volumes," says Jack Jordan, the $429 million CU's vice president of lending. He says the CU recouped its investment within 18 months, by saving labor costs on transposing loan applications from fax to computer. Improved processing times, reducing the time to approve a loan by an average of 10 minutes, also have been recorded, Jordan says. Velocity uses only the indirect lending software with no specific plans to deploy the other SAIL solutions right now, "although we are considering it," Jordan says. "We now approve loans faster, communicate faster and fund loans faster, giving us an important edge over many indirect lenders in our market," he says. "We can maintain desired monthly loan production goals without having to price our loans at the bottom of the market. Dealers like working with us even if we don't have the very lowest rates." Steve Maloney, Teres' vice president of product marketing, says Teres clients use SAIL Indirect to process loans for cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats and aircraft, and the company now is working on a new product – SAIL Direct. "It's in beta with several customers and will be used to process all types of direct loans – credit cards, personal unsecured loans, line of credit, secured loans and others," he says. -

[email protected]