Three Ways to Use a Mortgage CUSO, Add Value to Your Brand

by: Keith Varney, President, TruHome Solutions

With U.S. home sales surging in recent months, the ability to offer mortgage services to your membership is becoming even more crucial. It’s simple—credit unions can increase their profitability by expanding their mortgage services or by adding mortgage lending to their product offerings. And, when you consider the fact that Credit Union Service Organizations (CUSO) can be involved as much or little as your credit union chooses, the decision to partner with one seems obvious.

Here are the three ways credit unions use mortgage CUSOs to benefit their organizations and members.

Team up with a CUSO to offer members a full-service mortgage solution
It is not unusual for credit unions to offer partial mortgage services. However, if a credit union can’t fulfill every possible mortgage need, its members are left with a void, forced to seek out another financial institution.

Perhaps your credit union offers loan originations, but does not have the expertise to perform processing, underwriting and closing. Offering comprehensive mortgage services through a CUSO not only provides members with a quick, effective solution; it also positions your credit union as a one-stop shop, and thus, adds even more value to your brand. Not to mention, offering a wider range of loan products will help your credit union increase overall mortgage production, deepen member relationships and create more services per household.

More and more credit unions offer mortgage loans to their members but don’t have the manpower or budget to service them in-house. Partnering with a CUSO provides flexibility because they handle the complexities of today’s loan servicing and keep up with constantly changing regulatory requirements. In addition, outsourcing loan servicing reduces your credit union’s operating expenses by eliminating fixed costs and removes the day-to-day loan administrative tasks, which enables it to focus on providing more services to its membership.

Refer members to a trusted CUSO
When your credit union does not offer mortgage products, a mortgage CUSO provides simple referral processes allowing you to offer mortgage solutions to your members which, in turn, creates more net income for the credit union.

There are many benefits for the credit union in a referral situation. The costs with a CUSO are minimal, whereas working with a bank or mortgage broker can drive your members’ costs up and you’re referring members outside the cooperative environment! CUSOs follow the credit union philosophy of people helping people equating to a higher level of service that sets CUSOs apart from other lending providers.

Offer a mortgage CUSO’s services under private label
Want to offer your members mortgage services but don’t want to refer them to another financial organization? Give your members the personalized service they deserve by working with a mortgage CUSO under private label. Your members work with your brand for their mortgage needs.

Several mortgage CUSOs like TruHome Solutions offer a customizable private label partnership because, while they want to fulfill a CU’s needs, they also understand the importance of the member/credit union relationship.

Private label partnerships typically allow convenient in-branch payment processing, private label monthly billing statements and sometimes, even seamless member support transfer via a unique phone number. The idea here is that the credit union’s members will always feel as if they’re dealing directly with their credit union (as opposed to a mortgage CUSO). The credit union’s benefit is clear: it gains the ability to offer mortgage services while keeping all the positive brand value for itself.

When should you consider a CUSO?
Outsourcing to a mortgage CUSO is a profitable decision to make at any time, but even more so during periods of change. Whether your credit union is converting to new software, adapting to personnel transitions or experiencing banking shifts in the community, choosing to work with a trusted mortgage CUSO will provide unyielding stability in a time when your membership and staff need it most. It’s important to remember that CUSO staffs truly are specialized experts in the mortgage arena—it’s all they do each and every day. So allow a CUSO to lend its extensive knowledge and experience and in turn, it will help you eliminate staffing and servicing issues associated with the ebbs and flow of mortgage cycles, reduce compliance burden and allow you to offer all the back-end services necessary to streamline operations and better serve your members.

Keith Varney is President of TruHome Solutions, a Credit Union Mortgage Service Organization, providing a full range of private label services to credit unions (including sub-servicing),located in Lenexa, Kan. www.truhomesolutions.com