By helping members refinance their mortgages with us, we’ve saved individuals as much as $15,000-or eight years’ worth of payments-over the life of their mortgage.

Bringing these types of mortgages in house starting in July 2012 also helped the credit union meet its goal of a loan-to-share ratio between 100 to 110 percent. Currently they are at 108% loans to shares.

Note, this ratio is loans to savings on deposit, not to assets. We can exceed 100 percent due to the fact that 15.38 percent of our assets are in reserves. We can loan these reserves out.

We’ve put $8.6 million in these loans on our books since July 2012. We are $23 million in assets.

While we still partner with $1 billion Connexus Credit Union, Wausau, Wis., to do purchase money mortgages, as well as loans for non-owner occupied rentals and vacation homes, we thought we could bring these loans in house safely. A real support to us in this effort has been the Wisconsin Credit Union League’s compliance specialist program.

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