Job Description
Our Purpose
To create joy and ignite Michiganders’ Impossible Dreams.
Shared Commitments
At orsa, our commitments start with our purpose and are guided by our vibrantly lived values. We walk together toward strategic ends, galvanized by regenerative leadership and a growth orientation which moves us toward our human potential, so that we can support Michiganders in shaping the life they desire.
Role Purpose
The avp/collections leads orsa's collections function with equal measures of member empathy and financial discipline. This leader understands that a member in financial difficulty is still a member — and that how we show up in those moments says everything about who we are as an organization. At the same time, this role is responsible for protecting the financial health of orsa: managing delinquency, minimizing charge-offs, ensuring recovery activity is lawful and effective, and giving leadership the data and insight needed to make sound credit decisions.
The avp/collections partners closely with lending, risk, compliance, and member experience, serving as the primary liaision between the credit portfolio and the member relationship. This is a people leader who builds a team capable of having hard conversations with compassion, executing operational workflows with precision, and continuously improving how orsa supports members who are navigating financial hardship.
Primary Responsibilities
As an impact-driven team, our work is collaborative and dynamic. This role, like all positions at orsa, will be counted on to perform a variety of tasks as directed by leadership. Some of the core deliverables for this role are:
Role-Specific Contributions
- Lead the collections team — building capability, driving accountability, and creating an environment where difficult member conversations are handled with dignity and care.
- Own orsa's delinquency management strategy — setting goals, tracking performance, and adapting approaches across early-stage, mid-stage, and late-stage collections to optimize outcomes for both members and the credit union.
- Serve as a strategic partner to the chief lending officer and lending leadership, providing data-driven insight on portfolio delinquency trends, loss forecasting, and credit risk signals.
- Ensure all collections activity is fully compliant with applicable law and regulation, including FDCPA, UDAAP, Reg F, bankruptcy law, and any applicable state requirements.
- Collaborate with lending, risk, compliance, and member services to develop and refine hardship programs, loan modification options, and early intervention strategies that preserve the member relationship wherever possible.
- Partner with finance and risk teams to support CECL-related loss forecasting, charge-off recommendations, and reserve adequacy assessments.
- Report delinquency, recovery, and loss performance to leadership; present findings and recommendations to the lending committee and other governance bodies as required.
- Fulfill other responsibilities as needs evolve.
Delinquency Management & Collections Operations
- Oversee daily collections operations across all delinquency buckets — from first-notice outreach through charge-off and post charge-off recovery — ensuring workflows are efficient, compliant, and member-centered.
- Develop and maintain collection strategies by product type and risk segment; analyze performance data to refine approach and maximize cure and recovery rates.
- Manage skip tracing, repossession, and collateral recovery activity for secured loan defaults in accordance with legal requirements and orsa's policies.
- Oversee the management of bankruptcies, judgments, and legal collections activity; coordinate with outside counsel as needed.
- Establish and monitor call and contact standards, quality assurance practices, and case documentation requirements for the collections team.
- Manage vendor relationships for collections technology, skip tracing, repossession, and recovery services; ensure vendors comply with orsa's third-party risk management requirements.
- Maintain and continuously improve collections system configuration and workflow tools to maximize team efficiency and data quality.
- Oversee the end-to-end lifecycle of Real Estate Owned (REO) assets, from foreclosure initiation to disposition, maximizing recovery value while minimizing holding costs and legal exposure.
- Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) including Cure Rates, Charge-Off Ratios, Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), and REO carrying costs
- Manage relationships with external vendors, including repossession agencies, attorneys, and REO brokers, ensuring service level agreements (SLAs) are met and costs are controlled.
- Lead the resolution of complex investor loan issues, forbearance plans, and short sales, ensuring all documentation meets investor audit requirements.
- Conduct regular internal audits of investor loan files to identify and remediate deficiencies before external audits occur.
- Direct the loss mitigation team in evaluating borrower hardship cases, approving workout plans (modifications, repayment plans, deferrals), and negotiating settlements that balance member retention with asset preservation.
- Collaborate with Legal Counsel to navigate state-specific foreclosure laws and ensure all proceedings are legally sound and defensible.
- Prepare and present monthly portfolio health reports to ALCO and senior leadership, detailing delinquency trends, REO inventory status, and projected charge-offs.
- Maintain up-to-date policies and procedures for collections and REO management, updating them in response to regulatory changes (CFPB, FDIC) or shifts in market conditions.
Member Hardship & Early Intervention
- Design and manage orsa's member hardship and financial assistance programs — including payment deferrals, loan modifications, and financial counseling referrals — ensuring options are accessible, fair, and documented.
- Build early intervention strategies that identify members showing signs of financial stress before they reach serious delinquency; partner with member services and lending to activate proactive outreach.
- Champion a member-first approach within the collections team — ensuring that how orsa conducts collections activity reflects the organization's values and commitment to member dignity.
Compliance & Risk
- Ensure the collections function operates in full compliance with FDCPA, UDAAP, Reg F, state consumer protection laws, NCUA examination standards, and all applicable orsa policies.
- Maintain collections policy and procedure documentation; ensure team members are trained on regulatory requirements and internal standards.
- Serve as the collections subject matter expert during NCUA examinations, internal audits, and compliance reviews; respond to findings with timely corrective action.
- Monitor regulatory and legal developments affecting collections practice; recommend and implement policy updates proactively.
- Knowledge of investor backed first mortgage loans (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, VA, USDA).
- Ensure strict adherence to investor specific servicing guidelines, including timely reporting, loss mitigation protocols, and foreclosure timelines.
Qualification and Competency Requirements
As an organization focused on creating belonging, we appreciate that outstanding team members have different roads to excellence. Therefore, we don’t compromise on capability but are capability but use qualifications as guidelines. Typically, we’d expect an avp/collections to have built capabilities through experiences that would include a minimum of:
- Education:
- Bachelor's degree in finance, business, or a related field and/or at least five additional years of directly related experience.
- Work Experience:
- Minimum 7 years of collections experience with demonstrated progression, including at least 3 years in a leadership or supervisory role.
- Experience with consumer and mortgage collections.
- Ability to interpret complex financial statements and perform collateral valuation analysis.
- Industry Experience:
- In-depth knowledge of real estate law, foreclosure processes, and bankruptcy implications across multiple jurisdictions.
- Familiarity with Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), UDAAP, Reg F, CECL, Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), CFPB regulations and bankruptcy law.
Preferred Qualification and Competency Requirements
- Industry Experience:
- Commercial collections experience.
- Credit union or community bank experience.
- NCUA examination experience.
- Proven track record managing delinquency performance, compliance, and team development in a financial institution environment.
- Professional Credentials and/or Certifications:
- Certified Credit Union Collections Expert (CCUCE) or equivalent.
The outcome of experience is our priority, so proficiency will be evaluated over means of acquiring it. Necessary competencies include:
Leadership
At orsa, whether we serve as managers, lead cross-functional teams or initiatives, or simply lead ourselves, we are all leaders. The following leadership competencies are expected of all team members within a leadership capacity.
- Core Adaptive Capabilities: Systems thinking, pattern recognition, scenario planning and learning agility
- Human Centered Leadership: Empathy, emotional intelligence, psychological safety, inclusive leadership, purpose-drive motivation
- Strategic Thinking & Innovation: Horizon planning, breakthrough thinking, calculated risk taking, experimentation mindset
- Execution in Ambiguity: Decisive action despite uncertainty, agile implementation, resource flexibility, change leadership
- Technology & Data Fluency: Digital acumen, data literacy, ecosystem thinking, ethical technology use
Functional
- Collections Strategy & Delinquency Management: The ability to design, manage, and continuously improve a collections program that protects orsa's financial health while honoring the member relationship. This includes strategy development across the delinquency lifecycle, cure and recovery optimization, hardship program design, charge-off management, CECL-related loss forecasting support, and the operational and compliance discipline needed to keep the function lawful and effective. This is a new specialty competency proposed for addition to the JF3 (Consumer & Mortgage Lending) job family in the competency library.
- Compliance & Regulatory Fulfillment: The knowledge and discipline to ensure collections activity operates within all applicable legal and regulatory requirements — including FDCPA, UDAAP, Reg F, bankruptcy law, state consumer protection statutes, and NCUA examination standards. At the AVP level, this competency extends to policy ownership, examination management, audit response, and proactive monitoring of regulatory developments that affect collections practice.
- Consumer Credit Underwriting: A working understanding of consumer credit risk — how loans are structured, how creditworthiness is evaluated, and how portfolio risk characteristics drive delinquency patterns. For this role, this competency enables the AVP/collections to read portfolio data intelligently, contribute meaningfully to credit policy conversations, and communicate with lending leadership from a position of shared context.
- Operations & Process Management: The ability to design, manage, and improve the daily operational workflows that drive collections performance — including case management, call standards, documentation, vendor coordination, and reporting. At the AVP level, this competency supports the design of scalable collections operations that maintain quality and compliance as volume and complexity grow.
- Communication & Storytelling: The ability to communicate collections performance, member hardship trends, and portfolio risk with clarity and purpose — adapting the message for frontline team members, senior leadership, the lending committee, and NCUA examiners. For this role, communication is also a team competency: the AVP builds a team that can have difficult conversations with members in a way that reflects orsa's values and maintains the member relationship.
Work Model and Conditions: Hybrid
This position works in-office where working conditions, lighting, temperature, audio, and workspace are all sufficient. This position also works from home, where an appropriate work environment is required. Work requires the ability to constantly operate a computer and the ability to read, type, and communicate. Work may require the ability to move work-related supplies weighing up to 10-15 pounds.
The hybrid classification provides the opportunity to flex with purpose, empowering team members to work in locations best suited for work and life. In that spirit, those in a hybrid role are encouraged to maintain a commutable proximity to their primary work location because:
- The organization expects hybrid team members to attend certain meetings in person
- Managers may require onsite work to support outcomes
- Work model classification is subject to change
As a team member of orsa, you’ll enjoy:
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans
- Generous paid time off package for all full-time team members
- Up to 12-weeks paid paternity/maternity leave
- Lifestyle Accounts to help with your personal wellbeing
- Family Health Benefits
- Paid time off to observe all Federal Holidays
- Flexible work options depending on position
- A generous 401k match
- Numerous employee engagement activities
- Community Resource Groups
- Paid time off for occasions such as volunteering, caregiving, and family events
Contact/application information:
If this description appeals to you, please submit an application! A member of orsa’s talent acquisition team will be in contact with you shortly!
Equal Employment Opportunity Policy:
orsa credit union is an equal opportunity employer (M/F/D/V). We recruit, employ, train, compensate, and promote without regard to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable Federal, State or local laws.
Disclaimer:
This job posting highlights some of the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the position. There may be additional duties and responsibilities that are not listed above. A Talent Acquisition Specialist will be sure to discuss the role in further detail should your application be selected to move forward.
Please note that orsa credit union does not involve Artificial Intelligence (AI) when evaluating applications. Applications for this position are reviewed by a member within the Talent Acquisition team. We are dedicated to providing an equitable and thorough review of all submissions and look forward to additional connection as the recruitment process continues!