On the scene at ACUMA’s National Mortgage Conference – Day Two
Welcome to the day 2 summary of ACUMA’s National Conference. I think I’m a little bit smarter after today, but my wallet is a little bit lighter after last night. Once again, there were several great sessions. Read on for some highlights….
The day started with Steve Williams of Cornerstone Advisors. Steve talked about the need to have a mortgage strategy. And that the strategy needs to tell a story about your Credit Union. This strategy will be crucial going forward. It seems every lender is saying that they plan to replace refinance volume with growing the purchase business, but the reality is that there will be fewer loans done next year so it won’t be a one for one trade-off. Lenders with strong strategies (and stories) will be the more successful ones. So the question is “Does your Credit Union have a strategic plan for mortgage lending?” If not, you should be thinking about it.
There was a presentation about social media and marketing. The key take aways included having an elevator speech to tell a potential borrower or Realtor why they should do business with you. Also, I gathered that marketing of mortgages should not just be about marketing product or that you offer home loans, it can be able providing content to newspaper, radio and TV. The content needs to be educational in nature and it will create awareness that your Credit Union has expertise in mortgage lending.
Another session focused on loan quality, but not in the way mortgage lenders typically think about quality. We are normally concerned about the quality of the loan file and underwriting, but perhaps we should obsess around the quality of the member experience. Borrowers don’t get a mortgage loan very often so they aren’t as familiar with it as we are. Borrowers want to know what we need from them and for us to minimize the number of changes in our requests. They also want to close when they want to close and without closing chaos for last minute needs.
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