SAN DIEGO — USAA has been piloting a tool for the past two weeks to speed decisioning on the 10% of loan applications that require manual underwriting, said Renee Horne, vice president of consumer lending, during a panel discussion at the inaugural Auto Finance Sales and Marketing Summit yesterday.
“We recently implemented ‘Click to Chat,’” Horne said in a session about creating a digital customer experience. “The old way would take almost 24 hours to decision those [applications] that would roll to manual underwriting. Now, our team is able to interact in real-time and deliver that same speed of decision in terms of responsiveness to the member.”
USAA has been honing self-service options to create a better customer experience. For example, the bank enabled a digital process to request loan-payoff quotes. “In a couple of clicks they have that answer,” Horne said. “We’ve enabled that digitally as part of our payment servicing.”
The functionality provides for “quick answers without having to burden the customer with having to sit on hold or call to get that answer,” and it has taken “tens of thousands of calls out of our call center,” she added.
Horne noted that 60% of the bank’s members are digitally active in the auto loan space.
