Numerica Credit Union Revenue and Competitors

We also offer a first-time home buyer,s program, individual development accounts, and microlending. How does Numerica reach the diverse groups in its field of membership (FOM)? Our FOM covers the eastern part of Washington State and Northern Idaho. We have initiatives that reach out to the Latino population. We have hired bilingual employees in our branches and in our call center, and we have employees who participate in the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. We also support community activities directly related to the Hispanic population. How are your business lending efforts progressing? We've been in business lending for a number of years. We started by using a broker that provided us an opportunity to get in the business without much of an up-front investment in staffing. At the same time, we were participating business loans with a local community bank. We still use both of those channels, however, we now have a business lending department with three employees. We,re one of several owners of Member Business Lending LLC in Salt Lake City. This credit union service organization provides much of the back office support that has allowed us to move into Small Business Administration (SBA) lending. We also offer conventional business lending, deposits, and services. Our plan is to continue to expand our business lending into most of the markets we serve. Loans are the most popular business service. Whether it,s a conventional loan or a 504 SBA loan, these members appreciate the service we provide. Many of the loans we make aren,t large enough for banks to spend time on. We believe we can meet these needs while we increase our membership base. It,s interesting that new products credit unions have gone into are ones where the banks have left a void because the loans were too small and there wasn,t enough income. Two examples are home mortgages and lending to small businesses. What challenges are involved in providing business services? Learning about the business. We,ve had a couple of people on staff that were involved in business lending where they used to work, and we try to partner with other credit union organizations that can help us, whether that,s in underwriting or processing the paperwork. Like any new program we get involved in, we try to walk before we run. We,re pretty conservative when starting new programs. Having the expertise on staff or finding partners you trust are two ways to overcome some of the challenges. In many cases it would be cost-prohibitive to get into these programs without, at least in the beginning, having a partner with the expertise. Who are some members you,ve helped by providing business services? We,ve made several microloans to a member who is an immigrant from Guatemala. He imports craft goods from Guatemala that he sells at craft shows. We've made close to $100,000 in microloans to our members, many of whom are immigrants. We also helped a member finance a commercial building that housed his motorcycle business. This allowed him to lower the interest rate on the loan, and it provided additional operating capital. We also finance motorcycles from this shop. [The owner has] been a member of Numerica since 1998. Credit unions have many small-business owners within their fields of membership. We found our credit union had approximately 650 accounts that were members, businesses. This has been a great opportunity to provide additional value to existing members and to reach out to the business community as an alternate source for business loans. What,s the biggest challenge your CU faces today? The top challenges are [complying with] legislation and regulations, and fraud. The other big issues are growing our membership and differentiating ourselves from other financial service providers. It,s mind-boggling the amount of time and effort that go into complying with new rules and regulations. As a larger credit union, we have the resources to hire people to [help us] comply. We,re currently building a risk-management department to deal with these issues. I worry about the smaller credit unions that are required to comply at the same level. This will continue to be a major challenge for credit unions, particularly the smaller ones. We also have challenges related to our flat membership growth nationally. We need to find ways to make belonging to a credit union more attractive to younger members. The answer may be in differentiating ourselves from other institutions. However, we've been working on this for many years with little success.