USALLIANCE Financial is a $2.7 billion credit union headquartered near New York City. They have a large and diverse membership that spans the nation and operate branches in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

Why USALLIANCE Financial Sought a New Approach

USALLIANCE Financial faced significant challenges in managing audits manually. Managing audits on spreadsheets and email was cumbersome and time-consuming, which made it difficult to accomplish their audit plan each year.

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Their audit process included sending request lists through emails and manually organizing the responses in shared folders. According to Michael Duffy, VP of Audit & Risk at USALLIANCE Financial, they “would have people deleting files, changing file names… we would go through the documents, but we wouldn't know which item correlated to which request."

This made it difficult to track document submissions, coordinate with different lines of business, and manage work papers. Moreover, their process was prone to human errors, such as file renaming, version control issues, misplacement, and deletion.

USALLIANCE Financial felt their manual process lacked efficiency and detracted from their overall audit operations. They spent valuable time and resources on audit administration instead of audits and higher-order business needs. Additionally, the audit team faced challenges in effectively reviewing documents and ensuring they addressed all necessary compliance and risk management areas.

To address these issues, USALLIANCE Financial implemented Redboard, a credit union-specific audit management platform.

The Impact of Redboard

USALLIANCE Financial was able to centralize its audit activities, including all its documents, immediately. With Redboard, the credit union automated request lists and streamlined work paper organization. They relied on the audit structure built into the platform to eliminate any risk of version control issues, undocumented changes, or other file management problems. They also spent less time managing emails because the administrative functions were largely automated.

USALLIANCE Financial experienced significant improvements in its audit processes. Duffy estimated a time savings of about 30-40% in their audits. Matthew Ferrara, Auditor at USALLIANCE Financial, noted that they were able to accomplish much more of their audit plan in less time than usual. Additionally, the time savings gained allowed them to reallocate their resources to take on more assurance consulting engagements and work on various projects, such as risk management and new product development. Duffy explained that he was "able to dive into the more moderate- to lower-risk things that might present a compliance risk or other things that are not really top of mind but should be addressed."

USALLIANCE Financial noticed a difference in its audit process almost immediately after deploying it across the audit team. It wasn’t just the audit team that saw an improvement, though; business units also found the platform easy to use. Business units were quickly up and running after a brief 30-minute Q&A session. Both the audit team and business units appreciated Redboard’s focus on credit union-specific needs.

Ferrara mentioned the difference Redboard made to the team: “Honestly, I can't think of going back to not using Redboard… Sounds like a nightmare now.” When asked if there was anything else he’d want people to know, he added, “I would mention how receptive Redboard is to feedback.”

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