Defense Logistics Agency honored by Bank of America

In a ceremony Nov. 15, Defense Logistics Agency Director Vice Adm. Keith Lippert was honored by Bank of America for the strides the agency has made in reducing delinquencies within the government travel card program.

Presented by Katie Buck, senior vice president of government travel card services for Bank of America, the award acknowledges DLA’s best-in-class performance with an agency-wide travel card delinquency rate of just .7 percent in October. The Department of Defense as a whole performs at 1.25 percent and Fortune 500 companies at 5.5 percent. Both DLA and DoD have met and exceeded DoD’s goal of 2 percent.

In fiscal year 2005, DLA spent $42,879,744 on regular temporary duty travel, with 67 percent of that money spent via travel card.

According to Bank of America representative Louis Goodson, high-performing corporate programs in the private sector generally only capture about 30 percent of their travel spending within a travel card program, a comparison, he said, that demonstrates DLA’s superior accomplishment in this area.

DLA’s performance has been supported by the diligence of DLA Enterprise Support’s Defense Travel System team. “We’ve focused on continuing education of the work force regarding the tools DTS offers travelers,” said Ella Studer, the director of DLA’s enterprise support directorate.

At the heart of that education is the concept of split disbursement, where certain charges made to the card are automatically paid by travel voucher. This relieves the traveler of the responsibility of writing a personal check for that part of the charge card bill. DLA currently exceeds the DoD goal of 80 percent of the number of travel card payments made by split disbursement.

According to Studer, the split disbursement requirements for airline tickets, lodging and rental cars have contributed to the decreased delinquency rates by reducing the amount of money travelers have to pay out of their pockets should the travel voucher pay out after the charge card bill has already come due. “The whole team has really been working hard on this, and I think it shows,” Studer said.

“The results speak for themselves,” Lippert said. “We’ve come a long way.”

Defense Logistics Agency provides supply support, and technical and logistics services to the U.S. military services and several federal civilian agencies. Headquartered at Fort Belvoir, the agency is the one source for nearly every consumable item, whether for combat readiness, emergency preparedness or day-to-day operations. More information about DLA is available at www.dla.mil.

What are people saying about mortgages today:

Rates on 30-year mortgages edged down last week to a seven-month low. Mortgage-giant Freddie Mac reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to 6.3 percent, down slightly from 6.31 percent two weeks ago. It put rates at the lowest level since they were at 6.24 percent the first week of March.

Bank of Hawaii, Central Pacific Bank, Territorial Savings Bank and Wells Fargo Home Mortgages all cut their 30-year mortgage rates to 5.75 percent this week.

Most people think of a mortgage as a means to an end. After all, you buy a house, not a home loan. But a mortgage is much more than the path to homeownership. It is a financial instrument that must be managed, just like any other financial investment.