Reshape your lending strategy to meet your membership’s current and future needs

by CUNA

While the business lending market is steadily growing, so is the competition for market share. With little room to differentiate products based on interest rates, according to this article, an increasing number of financial institutions have transitioned to a digital lending strategy to attract small and medium sized business. These digital transformations have helped many credit unions reduce the time and effort it takes members to secure loans, increasing not only member satisfaction, but also the profitability of the credit union’s loan portfolio. As this trend continues, incorporating a digital lending strategy at your credit union will become even more vital to remaining relevant and competitive. 

It’s increasingly important to get ahead of the lending curve rather than falling behind. While many community financial institutions receive higher customer satisfaction compared to both larger and specialized financial institutions, this article highlights that many of these loyal members anticipate having to leave their trusted lending partners in the future to access specialized services that fulfil the needs of their growing business. Adopting a digital strategy now can ensure your credit union is agile to meet your business borrowers’ future needs. 

Creating an effective digital strategy that can adapt to changing members’ needs requires staying current on emerging industry trends. You’ll have a lot of digital service options to choose from when developing your digital lending strategy. Choosing the right strategy for your credit union requires assessing your organization’s risk appetite and loan portfolio goals. Loans that are less risky like credit-line renewals are more suitable to automation and as you move along the risk spectrum, riskier loans would necessitate more hands-on attention from lending professionals. When less human time is spent handling low risk loans, more resources are available to assess riskier loans. As your credit union aggregates more data on the performance of your loan portfolio, you’ll be able to confidently increase your automation.

You’ll need to build your lending expertise and ability to recognize and harness emerging trends if you want to provide a seamless lending experience for your members. At CUNA Business Lending Certification School, you’ll gain the in-depth lending knowledge you’ll need. 

“The presenters have many years of experience in business lending and credit union operations. The knowledge and information they provide during the program will assist commercial lending personnel to develop a commercial lending program or improve its existing program.” – Troy Bloch, CUBLP, commercial loan officer, Siouxland FCU

Specially designed as a three-year program with three consecutive levels of training, you’ll master the fundamentals to advanced business lending knowledge and skills necessary to keep your credit union relevant. 

You’ll cover business lending fundamentals and the best practices of top-performing commercial lending departments in your first year and in your second year, you’ll choose from the following lending specialization tracks:

In your third and final year, you’ll explore in-depth topics within your specialized track as you work towards earning your Credit Union Business Lending Professional (CUBLP) designation. You’ll receive your CUBLP designation which distinguishes you as a lending expert after you complete this program. Plus, you can come back after earning your designation to expand lending knowledge in Year 2 by working on another specialization track.

Start your journey towards mastering business lending and earning your CUBLP by joining us at CUNA Business Lending Certification school. Register for your spot today. 

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