The stars of credit union mortgage originators

By traditional measures, credit union originators are less efficient than their for-profit competitors. They’re not going to get rich quick, but that’s not what credit unions are about.

by. Chris Howard

Was catching up with Tim Mislansky’s terrific blog, Memberlicious, and was struck by something in his series on the National Mortgage News listing of the year’s Top 200 Mortgage Originators (a self-reported list). There are 19 credit union originators on the list. These folks are real stars, the hardest working originators in the business.

The average non-credit union originator on the list wrote 243 mortgages representing $83.4 million in volume. The average credit union originator wrote 348 mortgages representing $68.8 million in volume. That’s an average credit union loan size of $197,671, only 58% of the average loan size of for-profit lenders.

Only six non-credit union originators had an average loan size that was smaller than the credit union aggregate average. Fully three-quarters of the non-credit union originators had an average loan size larger than that of the credit union lender with the largest average loan size.

What does this mean? By traditional measures, the numbers suggest that credit union originators are less efficient than their for-profit competitors. If you are trying to get rich, then earning more money while doing less work is certainly good. But that’s not what credit unions are about.

 

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