Credit Card Origination: Automation

Within the realm of credit card origination, automation is key. Financial institutions that can't keep up with today's increasingly time-sensitive consumer are going to lose that consumers business to an institution that can.

The whole idea behind automation in credit card origination is speed. Because credit cards' simple nature and wide appeal, credit card origination is a high volume, low risk undertaking. In these types of situations, automation is crucial. Because they are comparatively low risk, credit cards can be automatically originated through a credit decisioning system with virtually no manual intervention. Because credit cards are a popular, high volume business, financial institutions require an efficient automated process for originating, approving, and issuing credit card products.

There are many credit decisioning solutions in the marketplace that meet the basic requirements for an automated origination system. However, there are additional requirements for an automated credit card origination system that are driven by the unique characteristics of credit card products as mentioned above.

The first requirement that a credit card origination solution should support is Straight through Processing. Straight through Processing allows a decision engine to process credit card applications from beginning to end in a completely automated fashion. Any time a manual review is required, the system can drop the application into a manual review queue. Once the manual review is completed, the application can immediately be re-introduced into the automated process right were it left off. Straight through Processing allows financial institutions to efficiently process the high volume of applications generated by their credit card origination initiatives.

The second requirement involves the end of the credit card origination process. Once a customer is approved for the product and the account is booked to the appropriate system of record, the consumer wants to start using their new card. Unfortunately, most banks can't fulfill this desire. The account may be created, but the consumer will not have the actual credit card for a couple weeks. Instant Issuance, allows consumers to start using the card the second after their account is created. Either by providing an interim credit card (like a receipt) or by actually printing off the final card at the point-of-sale, financial institutions can enable their customer to start utilizing their product immediately.

These two additional, credit card specific, requirement for an automated origination solution enable financial institutions to realize the best practices needed for the competitive credit card origination market.