iQ Credit Union Achieves 94% Purchase Mortgage Pull-Through Rate Using CU Realty Services’ HomeAdvantage Program
The credit union has given back more than $90,000 in Cash Rewards to members in just 18 months
SCOTTSDALE, AZ—iQ Credit Union, which serves 85,000 members throughout southwest Washington and Portland, is celebrating dramatic mortgage growth since implementing the HomeAdvantage® program from CU Realty Services. The turnkey real estate marketing platform helps credit unions retain more of its members’ mortgage business. iQ has achieved an impressive 300 percent improvement in its pull-through rate since launching HomeAdvantage in February of 2019. iQ’s starting pull-through rate was 23 percent. Now, when members use HomeAdvantage to buy a home, 94 percent of those applicants stay with the credit union for financing. Those buyers, as well as sellers, have saved more than $90,000 at closing through the program’s cash-back benefit.
iQ’s success is the result of HomeAdvantage’s powerful lead nurturing system, which balances automated touchpoints with personal outreach from both the program’s Member Concierge team and loyal real estate agents who keep the credit union’s brand and mortgage programs front-of-mind with members.
Reversing Low Loan Retention
Before launching HomeAdvantage, iQ had lots of room to grow to capture members with its mortgage programs. In fact, just three percent of members held a mortgage with iQ.
Industry-wide, credit unions underperform their banking counterparts when it comes to mortgage loans. Though 92 percent of credit union members report very or extremely high satisfaction — 10 percent higher than bank customers — credit unions fund a small minority of the mortgages originated in the United States.
Despite iQ’s efforts to increase their purchase mortgage business by adding staff and expanding marketing, more than 75 percent of their mortgage loan applicants ended up financing through other lenders.
iQ’s vice president of mortgage services, Dianne Smith, who had a two-decade career at large private banks, attributed those losses to local real estate agents who were directing members away from iQ to other financial institutions.
“For 25 years prior to coming to the credit union, I had been with pass-through lenders and large lenders. The relationship with realtors was very different than what it is in the credit union world,” said Smith. “When it came right down to it, the members that we were pre-qualifying never closed with us. We knew that there had been a transaction, but we didn’t get the loan in the end.”
When Smith heard of HomeAdvantage at the annual American Credit Union Mortgage Association (ACUMA) conference, she was intrigued to discover a solution tailored to credit unions that could not only attract more buyers but also nurture and track the mortgage leads it sends to agents.
Enhanced Mortgage Lead Nurturing
The HomeAdvantage platform works to keep home buying and selling members in the credit union’s pipeline. On the front end, HomeAdvantage features a real estate search portal that attracts and converts members into the credit union’s purchase lead pipeline. On the back end, a powerful command center offers critical lead management tools that help credit unions nurture leads as well as report on progress.
One of those features is a unique employee dashboard that allows loan officers to register members directly into the program and assign them to a HomeAdvantage-certified real estate agent if they are ready. Over 80 percent of iQ’s HomeAdvantage closings were registered using this tool.
Regardless of whether a member self-registers through the front-end search portal or was registered by a credit union employee, HomeAdvantage’s three-pronged lead nurturing formula works to keep them engaged until they are ready for a mortgage.
- Email drip campaigns deliver personalized real estate content to member inboxes;
- Personal outreach occurs via phone, text and chat from the HomeAdvantage Member Concierge team; and
- Certified real estate agents work to keep the credit union’s brand and mortgage programs top-of-mind with members using the program.
According to Smith, HomeAdvantage offered “a whole different way of looking at the interaction with realtors and leveraging it in a manner that wasn’t just to the agent’s benefit, but to ours as well.”
“HomeAdvantage has created this interesting dynamic that has provided so much more transparency than I ever thought possible,” said Smith. “Now, I’m very....-->
The credit union has given back more than $90,000 in Cash Rewards to members in just 18 months
SCOTTSDALE, AZ—iQ Credit Union, which serves 85,000 members throughout southwest Washington and Portland, is celebrating dramatic mortgage growth since implementing the HomeAdvantage® program from CU Realty Services. The turnkey real estate marketing platform helps credit unions retain more of its members’ mortgage b...