When Disaster Happens: One Small Credit Union in Connecticut Tells All
Middletown, CT -- Many small credit unions depend on their core technology partner to provide day-to-day technology management. Although these relationships offer undeniable payroll advantages as the credit unions are able to minimize the need for large IT departments, concerns can arise over the thought of a system disaster. According to Barbara Thorpe, CEO of MiddConn Federal Credit Union, reality can be surprising. “We have been on the FLEX system since 1998 and rarely have issues, so I did not know what to expect in a real catastrophe,” admitted Barbara. “When disaster hit, we were blown away by our off-site technology team at FLEX.” MiddConn oversees $20 million in assets and services 3,100 members in Middletown, Connecticut.
For years, MiddConn has serviced members from a large building that is susceptible to power outages. “Every time a storm comes through Middletown, our power goes out,” said Barbara. “It might be off for a few seconds or minutes, but it always happens.” After-storm procedures became routine for Barbara and her team and as their system continued to reboot the stress of a full system crash minimized. Finally, a major storm hit during late summer on a Wednesday night into Thursday morning. When Barbara returned to MiddConn in the morning at 8 a.m. the system would not turn on and panic set in.
Barbara phoned her FLEX support team with the dilemma and within minutes Senior Systems Engineer Joshua Cicon assessed that MiddConn was in a full system disaster. “Although we were in the middle of a nightmare, Josh was so capable that I was able to remain calm as we quickly worked to get our information back up and running remotely,” said Barbara.
MiddConn FCU with Barbara at the helm had prepared well for such a disaster by activating two critical FLEX products that are designed for such a scenario. The first is FLEX VAULT that stores daily financial data in protected FLEX data vaults in case the data is erased from the main system. The other is FLEX’s Disaster Recovery product that enlists FLEX to proactively work with the credit union to ensure that disasters are a rare occurrence, including annual onsite disaster recovery tests. According to Joshua Cicon, if credit unions have the correct services, FLEX can have them back up and running in no time. If, for some reason the credit union has not employed the products, FLEX can usually restore the information but it takes much longer to rebuild data than bring forward stored data that is actively updated on a regular basis.
Barbara Thorpe at MiddConn invoked Disaster by 8:30 a.m. and FLEX immediately went to work to minimize member impact. “We gather critical data files and disperse them to redundant servers at multiple locations to safely store. When Disaster Recovery is invoked we can then restore this critical information to bring a credit union operational and online, quickly and seamlessly. Internet banking is available immediately and if the office has accessible internet, each of the computers can be up and running within an hour or two,” said Joshua.
“When I first arrived at the office and found that our technology was not accessible, I was very worried about our members, especially because Thursday is our big ACH day for member payroll. The possibility of waiting another day or over the weekend was extremely stressful,” reflects Barbara. “It truly was an amazing accomplishment by FLEX to have our system up and running almost seamlessly by 10:30 a.m. I could not believe that the only thing that was slightly noticeable was a short delay on transactions and that our members saw no real disruptions.”
MiddConn had one more hiccup to work through when they found that their third-party debit card program was not working. “When I could not get the answers I needed from the vendor, I called Josh back to find out what we could do about the problem. The FLEX team went to work immediately to communicate directly with the outside vendor and work through the issue. I don’t know what I would have done without FLEX’s expertise and willingness to work through our issues that had nothing to do with FLEX,” said Barbara. According to Joshua Cicon, FLEX often works with third-party vendors to overcome issues for credit unions on their system. “We see our credit unions as part of our family and if we can help, we will. Although we cannot control third-party reaction, we can do our part to keep the chain of communication open as we do all within our power to help with the problem.”
Joshua Cicon recognizes that his quick success is because MiddConn took the precautionary steps to ensure that Disaster Recovery was immediate. “We offer recommendations for data backup to all of our credit union clients and hope that they follow our suggestions. If they back up their data, through our system or theirs, we will be able to help them in the unlikely event a real disaster strikes,” said Joshua.
Barbara found that her Disaster offered a real upside. “I am deeply grateful for many things that came about during that crisis and they are all connected with FLEX. I have been happy for years with our core system, but now am willing to share my extreme satisfaction with everyone,” expressed Barbara. “In addition, I no longer worry about what would happen in a worst-case scenario because I know FLEX will be there for us.”
As FLEX architects continually work to ensure that credit unions can access advanced technology for security and ease, they are also employing integrated features to minimize the need for outside vendors. Recent launches of automated Share Draft/ACH Processing Services and fully integrated Check 21 can be accessed in any of the FLEX offerings including In-house, Managed In-house, Managed Hosting or Online. FLEX combines the best benefits of in-house and online processing with a tightly-integrated overall solution that is extremely simple to manage with an array of choices and options for complete flexibility.
In recent years, credit union industry personnel ranked FLEX first among competing vendors for customer satisfaction. FLEX serves nearly 300 credit unions in locations across the nation, including Alaska, Hawaii, and the Eastern Caribbean. The company enjoys established relationships with all regulatory agencies, corporate credit unions and major industry partners.
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