I am interested in hearing from those of you that use a software program for CRA. Interested in knowing which one and how much you love/hate it? Also, aware of any program that your examiners love?

We use CRA Wiz I love it as you can slice and dice your data but I hate it because it's complicated and what's worse is I think that they make it complicated on purpose because they want you to pay for the training. The software is fairly expensive and if your FI isn't that big then I don't really see the need to go to all of that expense.

I understand the examiners are using Fair Lending Wiz in the bank examinations now. We don't have that module but I bet it would be helpful to see what the examiners are looking at before hand instead of waiting for them to give you the results....again pretty pricey.

Wiz almost enjoys a monopoly

We have used Marquis/Centrax since 1998. The software is great and you will not find a more knowledgeable or friendly support staff.

Many of our clients have used CRA Relief from QuestSoft. Although it doesn't have an internal mapping component it is very attractively priced (I think it is one of the best software values I have seen) and it has excellent CRA performance reports that help a bank monitor its CRA performance. Furthermore, the edit check utilities are very easy to use and very effective. It can be very efficient particularly when there is an interface between the LOS and CRA Relief.

We use RATA Associates' product Comply Lite. It may not have all the features of CRA Wiz but it is a fraction of the price. Their Customer Service is excellent and it is simple to use.

We use CRAwiz. It is complicated and expensive $25M/year (and we do not have all the Fair lending modules) plus additional servers etc. The support staff gets alot of calls from me. Especially around reporting time. We have a hard time taking a download of data importing into Excell to clean up for wiz and then importing into CRAwiz.

We use CRAWiz also. Agreed, it is expensive and their sales staff are always recommending efficiency training. Wiz soon will stop supporting the software on our current operating system. $$$$ to purchase the scripts to migrate to new operating system.

Some software companies have designed their software with all sorts of bells and whistles that require a high level of skill. Most bankers would agree that the level of sophistication is overkill and the cost is over budget for the average community bank. I am the president of QuestSoft so I hope that doesn't tune anyone out.

CRA RELIEF is software designed for the average community bank (not some mega-bank). It's simple and easy to use, with (1) efficient data edits that your data preparation people will appreciate, (2) effective performance reports that the CRA Officer can understand and (3) a cost way below the competition that management will like.

With all due respect to some other fine products and contrary to popular belief, if you take out the top 30 HMDA lenders (i.e. BofA, Chase, etc)who overwhelmingly use PCi (we serve 3 of the top 30), in Year 2008 forty-two percent (42%) (3,143,160 of the 7,515,442 records submitted from the non-Top 30) were confirmed submitted with QuestSoft software. Our geocoder is directly integrated into 27 loan origination systems including Fiserv and Harland products which is far more than any other system. So I am not sure given ours and other products if there really is the perceived monopoly out there anymore. But that might be another discussion thread someday.

I've used Marquis/Centrax - completely agree with Mack - great software - easy to use - & wonderful support staff!