Addressing Loan Growth When Interest Rates are Low

Ronda McCoy, Vice President of Lending
Michigan State University Federal Credit Union

Describe Your Role and Responsibilities.

I oversee all of the lending areas, so I am in charge of our business lending portfolio, indirect lending, mortgage lending, and then a quality assurance group which helps set the standards and makes sure we’re following the underwriting guidelines that are set for us. I’m also responsible for policies, establishing underwriting guidelines and things like that.

What are Some of Your Biggest Challenges?

Right now our biggest challenges are loan growth, due to the lower interest rates. We’ve seen quite a runoff on our mortgage lending and then some heavy competition with the auto makers in terms of auto financing and things like that. And plus with other banks, the things that they’re doing on the indirect lending side we just can’t compete with by paying the astronomical dealer reserves that they’re paying and the low interest rates. We can’t compete with that.  So loan growth is a big challenge for us as well as the compliance issues that we’re facing with all the new regulations that are coming out.

Which Experian Solutions Have You Implemented?

We are using Experian. They are our primary credit bureau provider. And then we also use Experian’s Quest^SM product to help us with some quarterly targeted mailings for our members. We use the Income Insight^SM to help us with pre-approvals for credit card. We also use the Experian Triggers to help us identify people who are out shopping so that we can contact them and maybe offer them a better product or service.

How is Partnering With Experian? How do we Work With You, Your Teams?

Experian has been great. Our account reps are very responsive. I came on new to the position and so they had been working with someone previous to me. They didn’t waste any time to reach out to me and get me the information and the tools I needed to make sure I understood what products and services we had and to offer training to our staff on credit reports. They’ve just been great to work with. They’re available and they are very quick to answer questions. So it’s just been a fabulous experience to work with them.

What do you Value Most About the Relationship?

I think the attention to detail and the timeliness. It’s really obvious that the reps like to build a relationship with us and so they go out of their way to answer questions and get us information in a very timely manner which is very important these days. So I think that’s what I value most.