After roughly a year in partnering with financial institutions to offer mortgages, Quicken Loans reports that a significant number of CUs have opted to use its mortgage platform for their mortgage lending needs.
Tod Highfield, divisional vice president with Quicken's Mortgage Services division, said roughly 350 community banks and credit unions have opted to partner with Quicken Loans Mortgage Services and that credit unions are among its largest clients in terms of mortgage volume.
"We have a few more community banks than we do credit unions, but I will tell you that our credit unions are the ones that generate our largest volumes," Highfield said. The division generates between $75 million and $100 million in mortgage volume each month and has seen a steady expansion of business with financial institutions, he added.
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Quicken Loans is best known for its strong retail business that has recently won awards for customer service. Highfield attributed the firm's success with CUs, in part, to its ability to carry that mortgage application process and its customer service from its retail operation to its financial institution business.
"We have the goal of making sure that a loan officer in a partner credit union has the same information, if not more information, about that loan application as the retail borrower would have," Highfield said. "We want that loan officer to be able to provide in the name of the credit union with the same levels of customer service and information that we would provide if he or she were our retail customer."
Quicken began its Mortgage Services division in June of 2010 with a warehouse line of lending where the credit union will take the application for a mortgage loan using Quicken's platform but where Quicken underwrites, funds and closes the loan in its own name. It also retains servicing of the loan, which Highfield said the firm sometimes sells and sometimes does not.
"We have a procedure that lets all of our credit unions know in advance whether we are likely to sell a given loan," Highfield explained, adding that the firm has no option at this time to allow a CU to retain loan servicing, but it working on adding that ability.
The firm launched a correspondent lending program in May of this year. Like the warehouse program, credit unions in a correspondent partnership with Quicken use Quicken's mortgage platform and lender portal, but unlike the warehouse program, the CUs close and fund the loans in their own names, only selling them after the fact to Quicken.
Credit unions in both programs appreciate using Quicken because it allows them offer mortgage loans without having to hire a whole mortgage originating or compliance staff, Highfield explained. About 30 credit unions have signed on with the correspondence program, he added.
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