Collections Manager

FreeStar Financial Credit Union•New Baltimore, NY

7d•Onsite

About The Position

The Repayment Solutions Manager leads FreeStar Financial Credit Union’s collections, loss mitigation, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and operational risk activities. The role oversees assigned staff, providing leadership, guidance, and professional development, while ensuring policies and procedures protect the credit union and support fair, appropriate member outcomes. The manager ensures compliance with applicable laws, regulations, network rules, and internal policies, monitors portfolio performance and emerging risks, and recommends strategies and controls to reduce losses and improve operational effectiveness. The position oversees delinquency management, member repayment and workout solutions, mortgage loss mitigation, fraud investigations and recoveries, disputes, legal processes, repossessions, garnishments, foreclosures, and OREO properties. It develops and maintains policies, controls, risk assessments, quality assurance, reporting, and third-party oversight. The manager coordinates significant incidents and corrective actions with relevant internal and external parties and keeps senior management informed of material risks and trends.

Requirements

High school diploma required.
Minimum of three years of similar or related experience in the financial industry.
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.
Understanding of applicable card-network and payment-system rules.
Ability to remain current on regulatory and legal developments affecting assigned functions.

Nice To Haves

Some college preferred.

Responsibilities

Monitor paid-ahead loans monthly.
Oversee delinquency management and ensure timely, consistent follow-up on delinquent, high-balance, and overdrawn accounts through approved communication channels.
Segment accounts by risk and circumstances, assign appropriate collection treatments, and ensure member interactions are professional, accurate, and compliant.
Oversee member outreach and repayment assessments; manage payment arrangements, modifications, settlements, hardship solutions, and other workout plans within approved authority and documentation requirements.
Oversee fraud prevention, detection, investigation, recovery, and debit card and electronic funds transfer disputes; ensure cases meet regulatory and network deadlines.
Establish escalation protocols for significant fraud incidents, repeat offenders, internal control concerns, and matters requiring legal, insurance, law enforcement, or senior management involvement.
Review delinquent mortgage loans, identify foreclosure-avoidance solutions, and negotiate with homeowners and real estate agents to increase potential savings to the credit union.
Lead responses to significant fraud and operational risk events, coordinating containment, investigation, member remediation, evidence preservation, recovery, insurance notifications, and communications with relevant parties.
Conduct root-cause analyses and ensure corrective actions are assigned, tracked, and validated.
Ensure accurate records are maintained for loss mitigation cases, including modified loan details, proposed resolutions, management approvals, member correspondence, and file analysis.
Develop, implement, evaluate, and update policies and procedures for collections, loss mitigation, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, and operational risk management.
Establish internal controls, approval authorities, segregation of duties, quality assurance reviews, and escalation requirements.
Conduct and maintain periodic fraud risk assessments across products, channels, payment methods, third parties, authentication, and fraud exposures; recommend control enhancements.
Monitor legal, regulatory, guidance, card-network, and other requirements affecting assigned functions, and coordinate updates to policies, procedures, systems, forms, notices, training, and monitoring.
Prepare and follow through on small claims and other legal processes for Courtesy Pay, overdrawn accounts, fraud, and loan losses, including court appearances.
Determine when loan collateral should be repossessed and liaise with attorneys or agencies handling repossessions.
Oversee the processing of garnishments and levies.
Evaluate third-party fraud and operational risk; participate in due diligence, contract review, performance monitoring, issue escalation, and remediation.
Keep senior management informed of material collection, loss mitigation, fraud, dispute, and operational risk matters, and promptly escalate significant losses, concerns, control failures, litigation exposure, emerging schemes, and adverse trends.
Develop timely reporting on delinquency, charge-offs, recoveries, bankruptcies, repossessions, foreclosures, modifications, fraud losses, disputes, control exceptions, and emerging risks; analyze and present trends, causes, actions, and recommendations to senior management and the Board of Directors.
Establish and monitor fraud and risk indicators, using trend analysis to adjust prevention strategies, staffing, system rules, transaction limits, and member education.
Coordinate mortgage and commercial lending foreclosures, including preparation and processing of mortgage insurance claims on defaulted real estate loans as applicable.
Maintain OREO properties for real estate lending and commercial lending.
Establish and oversee quality assurance, case-review, and control-testing standards; ensure exceptions are documented, reported, remediated, and used to improve operations.
Coordinate with Compliance and Internal Audit while maintaining appropriate independence between operational ownership and independent assurance functions.