Collections Manager

Do you have experience in collections or a compliance role? Looking to lead a team in Repayment Solutions? Join our dynamic team at FreeStar Financial Credit Union!

Job Title: Repayment Solutions Manager

Location: Selfridge Office

Schedule: Mon - Fri (Full-Time)

Benefits:

• 4 weeks PTO available in the first year
• 401k with up to a 6% match
• Up to a 5% year-end bonus

Purpose:

The primary purpose of the Repayment Solutions Manager is to assist FreeStar Financial Credit Union in fulfilling our mission to positively impact the lives of our members, team members, and community through making meaningful connections and progressive financial solutions.

Ensure that the credit union's collections, loss mitigation, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and risk management policies and procedures protect the credit union while supporting fair and appropriate member outcomes. Oversee assigned staff and provide leadership, guidance, and professional development. Ensure compliance with applicable state and federal laws, regulations, network rules, and internal policies. Monitor portfolio performance, fraud trends, emerging risks, and economic conditions; recommend strategies and controls to reduce losses and strengthen operational effectiveness.

Essential Duties

Monitor paid ahead loans on a monthly basis.

Oversee the credit union's delinquency management strategy and ensure timely, consistent follow-up on delinquent, high-balance, and overdrawn accounts through approved communication channels. Segment accounts by risk, balance, delinquency stage, collateral, member circumstances, and likelihood of recovery; assign appropriate collection treatments and ensure all member interactions are professional, accurate, and compliant.

Ensure members with high-balance or delinquent accounts are contacted to determine the cause of the delinquency, assess ability and willingness to repay, and identify appropriate resolution options. Oversee payment arrangements, modifications, settlements, hardship solutions, and other workout plans within approved authority levels, with required documentation, approvals, and monitoring through completion.

Oversee the credit union's fraud prevention, detection, investigation, and recovery activities, including debit card and electronic funds transfer disputes. Ensure cases are investigated, documented, resolved, and reported within applicable regulatory and network timeframes. Establish escalation protocols for significant incidents, repeat offenders, internal control concerns, and matters requiring legal, insurance, law enforcement, or senior management involvement.

Responsible for reviewing delinquent mortgage loans and identifying potential solutions for avoiding foreclosure. After identifying an appropriate solution for preventing foreclosure, negotiate with homeowners, real estate agents for increasing potential savings to the Credit Union.

Lead the response to significant fraud and operational risk events by coordinating containment, investigation, member remediation, evidence preservation, recovery efforts, insurance notifications, and communication with Compliance, Information Security, Legal Counsel, law enforcement, and senior management. Complete root-cause analyses and ensure corrective actions are assigned, tracked, and validated.

Ensure thorough and accurate record-keeping is required. Documentation of modified loan details, proposed resolutions, approvals from management, correspondence from member, and file analysis must be maintained for each loss mitigation case.

Develop, implement, evaluate, and regularly update policies and procedures for collections, loss mitigation, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and operational risk management. Establish sound internal controls, approval authorities, segregation of duties, quality assurance reviews, and escalation requirements to mitigate regulatory, financial, legal, reputational, and operational risks.

Conduct and maintain periodic fraud risk assessments covering products, delivery channels, payment methods, third-party relationships, member authentication, account takeover, identity theft, check fraud, card fraud, electronic payments, and internal fraud exposure. Recommend control enhancements based on identified vulnerabilities, loss trends, regulatory guidance, and emerging schemes.

Monitor changes in applicable laws, regulations, regulatory guidance, card-network rules, and legal requirements affecting collections, servicing, loss mitigation, fraud, disputes, garnishments, levies, repossessions, foreclosures, bankruptcy, and member communications. Coordinate required updates to policies, procedures, systems, forms, notices, training, and monitoring before effective dates.

Prepare and follow through on Small Claims and other Legal Processes' for Courtesy Pay, Overdrawn accounts, fraud and loan losses, including making court appearances.

Determine when loan collateral should be repossessed and serve as liaison with attorneys or agencies in handling repossession of collateral.

Oversee the processing of garnishments and levies.

Evaluate fraud and operational risk associated with collection agencies, repossession vendors, attorneys, payment processors, card networks, fraud-monitoring providers, and other relevant third parties. Participate in due diligence, contract review, performance monitoring, issue escalation, and remediation to ensure service providers meet the credit union's control, compliance, security, and member-service expectations.

Keep the appropriate members of senior management fully informed of material collection, loss mitigation, fraud, dispute, and operational risk matters. Promptly escalate significant losses, regulatory concerns, control failures, litigation exposure, emerging fraud schemes, adverse portfolio trends, and events that may affect members, financial performance, reputation, or the safety and soundness of the credit union.

Develop accurate and timely reporting on delinquency, charge-offs, recoveries, bankruptcies, repossessions, foreclosures, modifications, fraud losses, dispute activity, control exceptions, and emerging risks. Analyze results against budgets, risk tolerances, historical performance, and peer or industry benchmarks, and present significant trends, root causes, corrective actions, and recommendations to senior management and the Board of Directors.

Establish and monitor fraud and risk indicators, including attempted and confirmed fraud, gross and net losses, recoveries, dispute volumes, case aging, repeat events, control exceptions, investigation timeliness, and emerging threat patterns. Use trend analysis to adjust prevention strategies, staffing, system rules, transaction limits, and member education.

Coordinate and handle mortgage and commercial lending foreclosures; including, preparing and processing mortgage insurance claims on defaulted real estate loans, as applicable.

Maintain all OREO (Other Real Estate Owned) properties for both real estate lending and commercial lending.

Establish and oversee quality assurance, case-review, and control-testing standards for collections, loss mitigation, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and related recovery activities. Ensure identified exceptions are documented, reported, remediated, and used to improve procedures, training, system configuration, and management oversight. Coordinate with Compliance and Internal Audit while maintaining appropriate independence between operational ownership and independent assurance functions.

What you'll bring to FreeStar Financial

High School Diploma required, some college preferred.

Minimum of three years of similar or related experience in the financial industry.

Must possess working knowledge of laws, regulations, and requirements applicable to collections, lending, servicing, electronic funds transfers, disputes, privacy, credit reporting, debt collection, bankruptcy, repossession, foreclosure, garnishments, levies, fraud prevention, identity theft, information security, and the Bank Secrecy Act. The individual must also understand applicable card-network and payment-system rules and remain current on regulatory and legal developments affecting assigned functions.