By Brett Christensen
My extensive travel in our industry (15 years, 5.4 million airline miles and 700-plus credit unions visited) has led me to conclude the following: becoming a great consumer lending credit union requires a combination of well-trained employees that are set up structurally to succeed.
A well-trained consumer lender is able to:
- Cross-sell and up-sell
- Build performing higher-risk loans
- Sell insurance products
- Explain FICO scores to members
- Recognize the higher-risk and lower-risk loans in every credit tier
- Be able to identify bankruptcy predictors and know how to deal with them
- Use debt ratios appropriately
- Analyze loan-to-value so as to maximize booked loans
- Give higher-risk members a firm close
The structural issues that must be addressed by the lending managers at a credit union include:
- Whether or not you should use a centralized or decentralized lending operation
- How to increase individual loan officer productivity
- The proper role of variable pay in motivating sales behavior
- Structured loan policies that allow you to make more loans
- The keys to successful collections
- How to safely take on risk in all credit tiers
- The qualities of successful sales people and underwriters
- Successful loan product design
- Which lending delivery channel should you be working to maximize?
- How to permanently end the tension between the loan and operations departments
Employing strategies like these can significantly improve your direct consumer loan production.
Brett Christensen is owner of CU Lending Advice, LLC.
Discover more highly effective management tools at CUES School of Consumer Lending, September 17–18, 2012 in Schaumburg, Ill.
