DAYTON, Ohio — Wright-Patt Credit Union here recently won Prime Alliance's "Best Surging Market Strategy" Award at the mortgage CUSO's annual conference, a prize worthy of particular note because of the area's declining real estate market (a 3.3% foreclosure rate).
Tim Mislansky is senior vice president at Wright-Patt and the president of myCUmortgage, a CUSO of WPCU that does back office mortgage work for some 44 other credit unions.
"Our mission is, 'We Help People Through Life,' and feel an obligation to fight predatory lending," he said. WPCU wanted to seek out a niche, or emerging market and found it had a very low percentage of application and closed loan volume from African Americans, especially compared to the demographics of membership.
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"We've been doing mortgages a long time and around two years ago kept getting inquiries about matching a rate or deal from Countrywide or Bank of America. We realized we were all competing for the same mortgages," Mislansky said. Seeking to broaden its impact in Montgomery and Greene County, where the African American homeownership rate was 47% and 38% respectively, as opposed to 70% for Whites, WPCU worked with Fannie Mae, which crunched HMDA data and analyzed branch locations that identified the distribution of African American households. Then they targeted five specific member center areas.
The next step was to learn the social and emotional touch-points that enabled them to effectively market to African Americans. "Fannie Mae showed us their focus group research and seminars and we spent a fair amount of time learning about key drivers for buying a home," Mislansky explained. "You don't just wake up one day and say to the African American community that we're a trusted advisor and just expect them to believe it. Our point was to let them know that if people in the greater Dayton area wanted to buy a home that Wright-Patt was where to go. And we were in this for the long-term. We got a total buy-in from senior management."
WPCU initiated diversity training and educated several representatives in the branch locations on how to take mortgage applications. Finally, a new job position, titled Community Development Mortgage Originator was created and a well-known person in the community was hired to fill it, Angela Yarbrough. "Angela came from Fifth-Third Bank," Mislanky said. "She spends half her time originating mortgages and the other half working with local community and housing groups, particularly the Homeownership Center of Greater Dayton and the Dayton Urban League. We also do seminars there and they refer people to us."
Now they were ready for a plan, he said. They set targets and due dates for all items and shared it with staff. Soon, the partnerships and time investment began to show results, said Mislansky. With Fannie Mae's MyCommunity Mortgage low-down payment requirement and simplified approvals and marketing the program worked (radio, TV and billboard advertising, etc.).
Even the CU's compensation plan switched from paying a small base salary and basis points on loan volume with tiers for dollar volume to one of a small base salary and basis pionts on loan volume for the number of loans. And production bonuses went from dollar amount targets to number of loan targets. Within just nine months one in every five loans was for a MyCommunity Mortgage
Mislansky said the program's efforts can be replicated by other CUs, but first, like WPCU, it's important to stop trying to be all things to all people. "I think a lot of credit unions try to do that," he said. Then, taking the time to plan, getting the right products, identifying the niche and creating targets and measuring results makes for success. "Take it in small chunks," he said.
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