Key technologies to support credit union loan growth in 2022

Here’s a data point worth celebrating — last year, credit unions picked up 5 million memberships according to a new February 2022 Credit Union Trends report based on data from December, according to CUNA Mutual Group. This is the most significant membership gain in the past 120 years of credit union history.

The good news for your credit union’s loan department is that new credit union members are not only deposit customers, but they are increasingly becoming loan customers, too.

According to the CUNA Mutual Group report, “Loan balances at credit unions increased $29.9 billion from June 30, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2021, reaching nearly $1.24 trillion at quarter’s end. This 2.5% quarter-over-quarter increase is the largest quarterly loan growth rate for the industry in both dollar and percentage since 2018.”

Leverage anticipated credit union loan growth will continue in 2022 and 2023. This increase in loan activity is driven by consumer demand for new cars, appliances, and credit card balances, which are escalating as spending on these items increases.

Given this positive news, it’s critical to prepare your credit union to take advantage of this additional loan volume by implementing new technologies to support your digital workflow.

If your credit union has not already adopted a digital workflow, now is the time to take action to decrease inefficiencies in your lending workflow and provide the experience that many consumers now expect from their financial services provider. This action alone will add actual basis points to every loan transaction, which positively affects your bottom line.

Some additional trends to monitor related to leveraging the acceleration of credit union lending include:

One of the essential technologies to add to your digital lending workflow is a cloud-based document management platform.

Doing so will allow you to have all your loan documents securely accessible to the specific team members and third parties who need them and can scale your loan operations with secure online access your credit union needs to implement a cloud-based document management system that offers e-signature.

In addition, providing your credit union team, members, and vendors with mobile access is also critical. Having a mobile-optimized workflow will not only elevate your overall client experience and allow everyone involved in a lending transaction to remain engaged, but it will also expedite all phases of the loan process by allowing processing to progress from any location and any device.

Accessible analytics to measure your digital loan workflow results are critical. Creating a metrics dashboard is imperative to truly understand the gains made by your credit union’s digital workflow. Your credit union lending team should be able to track your loan operations’ efficiency, performance, and profitability using a pre-built tool or through an internal reporting methodology.

Having access to these insights will help you better understand where potential bottlenecks and barriers are in the loan closing process and give you a window into the growth and success of all phases of your loan origination workflow.

Take advantage of consumer loan growth with a digital credit union loan process.

Now that we are closing in on the second quarter of the year, it’s prime time for credit unions to capitalize on the acceleration of the lending market in general and the traditional spring-time uptick in consumer loan activity.

The strategies above can help your credit union evolve to meet new expectations driven by the adoption and advancement of technology. If you haven’t already considered implementing a digital document management system to ensure you can manage the new opportunities afforded by the market and the other trends mentioned above, learn more at SmartVault.com.