Why information governance should be a priority for credit unions today

Many large credit unions have made remote work a regularity. A National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU) survey found that employees at credit unions with more than $1 billion in assets plan to average two workdays at home each week moving forward. The same trend exists for smaller credit unions. While hybrid work grants employees much-desired freedom, the arrangement can also be an obstacle to working productively, maintaining business continuity or enhancing customer offerings.

To balance work from home preferences with organizational growth, IT leaders at credit unions must build a secure information-governance backbone.

Use frameworks as guideposts for efficient information practices

Hybrid employees must access and retrieve enterprise and sensitive data from various locations and for numerous purposes, such as serving members or pursuing growth opportunities. It can be difficult to manage and oversee information storage and access in an environment where connections to file servers come from disparate applications and locations. Solving these issues can improve productivity and team collaboration even when employees work remotely most of the week.

To turn a fragmented environment into one that enables efficiency at work and even allows credit unions to more easily collaborate with coworkers, robust information governance is key. Not simply a buzzword, “information governance” instead refers to a framework that Gartner believes can help organizations establish standardized processes, roles and policies for information storage, use, archival and deletion, even across different systems.

Glasgow Credit Union, one of Europe’s largest credit unions, exemplifies how other firms can build their own information governance backbone to centralize all types of content across applications.

Centralize, automate and integrate to introduce agility

Operational agility is having a dynamic capability that can be leveraged quickly and efficiently to improve business performance in volatile market conditions, such as the recent pandemic or major industry changes, like the Uberification of services.

Even before the pandemic, Glasgow Credit Union suffered from a shortcoming prevalent in the industry. Many of its processes were manual, cumbersome, paper-heavy and, as a result, not scalable. Imagine this sort of environment with a hybrid workforce during a volatile market environment. Sharing and retrieving information in an analog world without scalable processes would be all but impossible with distributed team members.

Recognizing this challenge, the credit union created an automated information-governance platform as part of a broad modernization initiative. Through this platform, the firm digitized and centralized loan applications and member onboarding processes, integrating it all with existing technology tools. Centralizing and integrating information workflows reduced the frequency of switching between line-of-business applications and ensured information was accessible when employees or members needed it.

Along with increasing information accessibility, this backbone also helped streamline and enhance the experience for its members. More accessible, digitized information empowered the team to accelerate loan-processing and member-onboarding time. The credit union was also able to launch a member self-service channel for after-hours activity, all supported by the information-governance hub. Automating various processes saved the team many work hours each week, enabling them to instead focus on expanding the credit union’s operational capacity.

Digital information-governance approaches like this also strengthen information security practices. Sharing files across remote locations elevates the risk of data breaches or compliance miscues. Leveraging a secure, centralized platform to do affords companies built-in compliance functionality and safety. Platforms with enterprise-level identity management for provisioning access rights alongside granular user controls allow companies to more easily address regulations, like SOC 2, for the lifecycle of their files.

Though pandemic planning wasn’t part of the organization’s plans, this digitized information-governance approach allowed Glasgow Credit Union to be well equipped to handle the COVID disruption. Its centralized digital information hub combined with standardized policies allowed the organization to move seamlessly into a remote-work world while continuing to address member needs.

In fact, rather than simply move through the paces during the disruption, the credit union thrived thanks to its newfound agility. The organization was able to quickly pivot to more digitally focused services, cutting down on resources it had to devote to a variety of activities. This dynamic ability allowed Glasgow Credit Union to expand and scale, even in an uncertain economic climate.

Revolutionize information governance, realize operational progress

Against the dynamic backdrop that is today’s hybrid-work experiment, agility will be crucial for all credit unions. Yet, it appears many organizations are struggling to develop the same sort of digitized and centralized information-governance approach Glasgow Credit Union adopted. A Gartner survey found that, while 63% of organizations agree information governance is a critical priority, just six percent are satisfied with their progress in that regard. If credit unions want to thrive in this new environment, they must leap ahead of the curve and begin building their own information-governance backbone, today.