LAS VEGAS-Credit Union Journal asked attendees of the Auto & Mortgage Lending Symposium co-hosted here by CUDL and Prime Alliance: Is your loan portfolio growing in 2010, and what are you doing?
Definitely yes, because we are growing our deposits at a fast pace. Our deposit growth rate is 10% year to date, so 30% annualized. We are looking at mortgage lending to help members become homeowners, and we are making what we call true small member business loans. Our niche for small business loans is $250,000 and under.
On our other products, such as auto loans and credit cards, we are looking to improve the processes. If we can improve the way we do things and save some money, we can give a better price to the members.
Tim Mislansky
SVP, Wright-Patt CU
Fairborn, Ohio
and president of myCUmortgage CUSO
We will be hosting a first-time homebuyers seminar next week. We felt it was time to get back to educating members. We targeted communities where we have branches and invited members to attend. We will have a Realtor and a representative from a title company present to explain the process. We will try to pre-qualify members if they are ready to buy, and if they are not ready, we will tell them what they need to get ready.
Cindy Campano
VP of lending, Arizona State CU
Phoenix
On the consumer side we are running prescreens to qualify members for auto loans and HELOCs. Considering the market, the HELOC campaign is doing well. There are not a lot of people in Phoenix who have equity right now, but the numbers are improving over where they were six months ago.
Auto lending is going really well as conditions improve. We had been only at $4 million per month, but now we are up to $10 million per month.
Jennifer Hernandez
AVP of consumer lending, Arizona State CU
Phoenix
Our goal is to grow overall lending by 10% this year, while maintaining our low delinquency rate.
The biggest problem we are facing is Texas is just now experiencing the job losses the rest of the country has been hit with for a while now, so we are getting lots of voluntary repos. They have doubled in the first quarter.
Overall we are growing. In the first quarter our indirect lending was up 10%. The challenge is we are looking at a lot more loan applications. Mortgage lending is going okay. One problem in real estate lending is "lot loans," where people intended to build two or three years out-a lot of those are coming back.
Margaret Hartenstine
VP of Lending, San Antonio CU
San Antonio
