Two stories from Credit Union Times' David Morrison caught my eye recently: “Credit Union Mortgage Lending Soars” (Aug. 14) and “Housing Demand to Surge: MBA” (Aug. 31). This prompts me to write a simple message to the credit union community: Good job and get ready!

In the Aug. 14 article, Morrison reported on a recent TransUnion meeting where it was revealed that credit unions accounted for 11% of all U.S. mortgage originations during the first quarter of 2015, compared to 7% previously. Add to that credit unions' impressive growth in first mortgage originations – a 49.43% increase during the second quarter of 2015 over the first six months of last year, according to Callahan & Associates' Peer-to-Peer Analytics data.

Then in Morrison's Aug. 31 article, he noted the Mortgage Bankers Association's prediction of 13.9 million to 15.9 million new households in the next 10 years. That spells opportunity for credit unions that want to make an even bigger dent in the first mortgage market. By letting their up and coming members know about their mortgage services now, credit unions can be well-positioned to step in and help when members are ready to make a move.

So here's a shout out to our industry for its first mortgage growth! And thanks to David Morrison for reporting on credit unions' progress and opportunity.

Mike Corn

President/CEO

CU Realty Services, Inc.

Scottsdale, Ariz.

Editor's note: The following originally appeared as a comment on the Sept. 3, 2015 web article, “Durbin Failing to Lower Merchant Costs: Study.”

I've always considered Durbin's greatest contribution to be restoring a modicum of honesty into the card biz, which is operated more like a cartel than a national payments system, and picking up where the CARD Act left off.

The U.S. is way behind other developed countries in addressing the card companies' and big banks' inflation of payments system costs with largely hidden, non-negotiable, and non-competitive fees and charges that far exceed the operating costs that they originally intended to cover. The card associations and banks themselves were able to impose these costs with impunity because they were hidden from cardholders, or worse, assumed by cardholders to be imposed by merchants.

The Durbin Amendment focused long overdue attention on the deceptive, collusive and anti-competitive practices of the major card companies and the “too big to behave” banks, which yielded massive profits on the backs of merchants and cardholders.

jrwells5