Colonial Savings

The challenge

From shifting regulations to updated compliance requirements, change is a given for financial institutions. Leading mortgage lender and service provider CU Members Mortgage, a division of Colonial Savings, F.A., tackled change head-on after new compliance standards required the bank’s more than 500 credit union clients to complete their own Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) reporting, which involved an exchange of loan documents between parties. Colonial was already using Hyland's OnBase to manage documents internally and present information to credit unions through an online portal. However, the volume and breadth of loan-related documents that now had to be shared externally demanded a new approach.

After evaluating its existing file-sharing options — using FTP sites that required IT involvement or using encrypted CDs or thumb drives with added shipping costs and manual work — Colonial turned to Hyland and ShareBase.

The solution

Working closely with strategic information management partner Integrated Document Technologies (IDT), Colonial quickly realized the potential of the cloud-based file-sharing application, which is hosted in the purpose-built Hyland Cloud.

“We didn’t have a lot of time to deploy, with all the regulations the industry has now,” said Marcia Wilson, vice president of imaging at Colonial. “The majority of credit unions had never performed their own HMDA reporting, so we wanted to make the process as simple as possible. ShareBase came at exactly the right time.”

With ShareBase, Colonial easily and securely shares loan-related documents outside its four walls with its credit union clients, as well as any other necessary third parties, like investors and title companies — without involvement from Colonial’s IT department.

By combining ShareBase with OnBase's workflow automation capabilities, IDT helped Colonial implement a fully automated solution that extends the reach of its content services for its CU Members Mortgage division.

“Using the OnBase interaction with ShareBase, we proved we could completely automate the process based on a specific event or some document entering workflow at a specific point in time,” IDT CEO Paul Szemplinski said. “That closed the gap, and we knew we had a real solution.”

When documents are captured into the system for a particular loan or request, the solution uses information such as credit union number and contract level to automatically create and populate ShareBase folders with documents for external sharing. The triggers built into the capture system solved a multitude of challenges for Colonial.

“Without ShareBase, we would have had to hire 20 people just to mine and pull the documents and burn them on a CD or thumb drive,” Wilson said. “There’s no way we could have accomplished it and met our timeline for compliance.”

In addition to replacing the need for inefficient sharing methods, ShareBase eliminated the need to provide credit unions with direct access to Colonial’s internal OnBase system or purchase additional client access licenses. Today, authorized credit union users log into their existing online CU Members Mortgage portal and click on an option to “view loans,” which provides them with secure access to all their loans organized into folders in ShareBase.

“The credit unions love it because they get their files faster, and it’s a much cleaner picture for them,” Wilson said. “It’s also a more efficient delivery as far as timing. When actions are taken in OnBase, they have that visibility.”

But the most significant value has come in the form of external service.

“Above all, the greatest benefit has been providing better customer service to our credit unions,” Wilson said. “That’s what it’s all about. It’s our differentiator.”

Together, these benefits add up to more than IT value for Colonial. Putting ShareBase in place was a smart business decision.