The Lender*VP Collections team at CU*Answers tested the limits of its disaster recovery plan by holding a second “brown out” test. This test required the entire team to be absent and allowed no remote access to simulate no building access. “The results were good but somewhat surprising and validated our work,” said Collections Manager Jerry Collins. “We received only 18 voice mails for the day rather than the average of 60 incoming calls which indicates the outbound calls do initiate inbound calls.” The Lender*VP Collections team was able to catch up on missing work by mid-day the following day.

This test was a follow up response to the State of Michigan shutting down several businesses, reopening them again, only to shut them down again. “We needed to see what to would happen if this were a mandate on our team. We don’t expect we will ever be “non-essential,” but we want to be prepared for anything,” explained Collins. Lender*VP needed to see how that would affect their business plan. “The clients we serve we very understating and only a few had questions and none had concerns as we all know we are testing new ground everyday now.”

The Lender*VP Collections team serves as a partner for collections for many of the over 300 clients using CU*Answers across the country. Some credit unions are permanent fixtures who have been partners for years and some prefer a ‘repair and return’ policy. In either case, Lender*VP Collections is there to support the clients of its 100% credit union-owned cooperative CUSO.