LAS VEGAS-At NACUSO's recent Annual Conference here, Credit Union Journal asked attendees what lessons their CUSOs learned from the recession.
Gail Koehler, President and CEO
CU Channels LLC
West Lafayette, Ind.
We are doing things differently now, but no so much from the recession as from new regulations. Obviously, though, the regulations came as a result of the recession. From 1995 when we started we never had a loss until we did for two straight years, 2009-2010. We are a mortgage CUSO, so we really struggled. The changes we have made are not huge, but we eliminated a procession position and made other cuts to decrease operating expenses. We used to be in 48 states, now we are in five.
Bill Beardsley, President
MBC Loans, Ann Arbor, Mich.
We are in commercial lending, helping credit unions make, manage and collect business loans. The recession led to a need for a greater investment in transparency. Credit unions need all the information possible to make a great loan decision, and they also need quality. For quality we added staff. We have found credit unions are willing to pay for quality loans.
Judy Sandberg, SVP and COO
Gateway Services Group LLC, Denver
We have done a lot of things different. Gateway Services is in insurance and trust services, so we had to look at efficiency. We had to tune up our operations so we could be lean and mean. We had to lay off a bunch of people, we changed our computer system and we changed how we utilized our staff. We are doing well now, so the net result of the recession is we are better, and we are starting to hire back people.
Russell Harton, VP
Redstone Services Group
Huntsville, Ala.
We were pretty lucky in that we are in an area that was not hit hard by the recession. We did not have to make any changes for that reason. One thing that is different is we used to run investment services and insurance through the CUSO, but that went back to the credit union. We now are looking to expand into technology and perhaps employee training.
John Zmolek, President
CU Home Mortgage Solutions, Seattle
Being a mortgage CUSO it has been a big growth opportunity for us. Because the regulators, in response to the crisis, have pushed more compliance on lenders-which has meant we are seeing more growth. I am also the chief lending officer for Verity Credit Union, so with that hat I say we learned the assumptions people make do not always pan out. Everyone said home prices will never go down. Now we know there is a risk that must be accounted for.
