A Personal Note from Advantage Credit
As the Manager of Rescore Services for Advantage Credit, along with having over 30 years of experience in mortgage and credit, I’ve written a great deal of original industry articles, with 99% of those covering something credit related. With everyone stressed, worried and frazzled right now, this article is a little diversion from that topic. My goal is to cover how we at Advantage Credit are handling this new world reality.
Through all this, we at Advantage Credit want you to know that we are still here to help. We are a completely virtual office with employees all over the United States. There is zero learning/training curve here as absolutely nothing has changed for us, so it is for the most part business as usual. Almost 20 years ago, the owner of Advantage Credit, Don Unger, sent me home from the office as an “experiment” of what it would be like to have virtual employees. After one month, I wanted to go back to the office. He said we needed more time. Reluctantly l went back home. After three months, I was getting into the groove of working from home and actually liked it. I could do things like wash windows on my lunch hour and I got to be home with my dogs all day! At that point, Don decided to experiment with a few other people in the office. Don explains, “One of my goals was to be able to add to our staff as our business grew without having to expand our brick and mortar environment.” As more of the staff moved home, we realized it wasn’t necessary that employees live in Colorado to work for Advantage Credit. Several of our employees (including me) moved out of state to be closer to family.
Because this model has worked so well, we are able to hire the best and most experienced in the field of mortgage and credit reporting, as we are not limited to only hiring in the Denver area. Even though all of our employees work from home, they do go through a very intensive two-week training class in our home office in Evergreen when they are hired. Having done this for so many years now, we have all the necessary processes, procedures, security and equipment in place that fulfills the strict compliance environment that we all work in. We also have great insight on all the ups and downs of what it is like to work from home, so we are a great resource for those who have been recently thrust into the work from home reality.
Even though we do all work from home, we have a VERY secure virtual environment headed by an exceptional IT team. They are constantly monitoring systems to ensure our security. The head of the IT Department, John McCloskey states that, “We are continuously putting provisions in place to ensure the security of our operating systems.” This helps protect not only us but also our clients and their borrower’s information. We are also completely paperless and follow very strict guidelines in regards to our home offices.
I know things are uneasy right now. Keep looking up and looking forward. We will all get through this and Advantage Credit is here to help! As always, we will continue to be here for all our clients and their servicing needs. While we may be scattered all over the United States we are still one team working for you. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us with anything you may need.