New CU Tech Installs: Money & Loan Management

A budget tool offered free within its online banking and mobile app for members and a fully-integrated loan participation platform are upgrades recently installed by Michigan and Massachusetts-based credit unions.

The Lehi, Utah-based MX, which it said delivers actionable financial data, now provides members of the $6-billion Grand Rapids-based Lake Michigan Credit Union the ability to take control of their finances and track their progress towards financial well-being.

Powered by MX’s digital money management, which according to firm collects and enriches data and then presents guiding insights help members take smart financial action, LMCU’s Budget Tool allows members to aggregate their accounts from other financial institutions – giving them a clear view of all their finances in one place. Members can also easily track and categorize their spending, create budgets, manage debt and more. LMCU is offering the DMM data solution to its more than 420,000 members for free, within online banking and mobile banking.

“Our members now have relevant, visible and timely advice and control of their finances, and the best part about it – it’s free,” Don Bratt, chief marketing officer, LMCU, said. “It’s just one more way we’re delivering on our credit union’s mission to deliver value and make our members happy.”

“More than ever, customers are expecting guidance and personalized financial clarity in exchange for their loyalty and trust,” Nate Gardner, chief customer officer, MX said. “LMCU is a credit union that obviously understands this and is taking its stewardship to the next level – shaping a digital experience that delivers against customers’ expectations.”

On the heels of announcing the close of $6.5 million Series A funding just last month, New York-based LoanStreet Inc., a fully-integrated loan participation platform, announced the addition of the $1.8 billion Fitchburg, Mass.-based Workers Credit Union to their loan participation program.

According to LoanStreet, its platform allows smaller institutions such as credit unions and community banks to streamline the process of sharing, managing and originating loans all in one place. The firm suggested its technology offers significant cost savings by automating manual processes and providing access to its nationwide network of loan buyers and sellers.

“We turned to LoanStreet as an alternative funding source for our fast expanding loan operations.  We simply had more loan demand than capacity on our balance sheet. LoanStreet’s deep network of credit unions quickly solved our needs,” Tim Smith, CFO at Workers, said.  “Ultimately, we ended up on-boarding our entire participation book onto LoanStreet’s platform.  Once we saw the benefits of LoanStreet’s on-going reporting tools, we immediately decided to take full advantage of those services and moved decisively to automate all of our participation reporting.”

LoanStreet’s fully-integrated, SaaS platform brings together a series of tools that help credit unions more effectively share and manage loans at scale. The technology automates the entire reporting process and provides a standardized, consolidated view of every transaction in a user’s portfolio — no matter how many different counterparties it may partner with. LoanStreet said these tools provide credit unions with the ability to track their loan portfolio performance with greater accuracy and less administrative overhead.

“Manual processing of participation reports is a deadweight on the credit union industry,” Ian Lampl, CEO of LoanStreet, said.  “Once credit unions become aware of LoanStreet’s ability to broaden their network while automating away wasteful and error-prone manual processes, the decision to move all of their participations to LoanStreet’s platform tends to be an immediate one. We allow them to more profitably manage and diversify their balance sheet — and free up valuable time to more effectively serve their members.”