NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The liaison from the FHA to the credit union industry had a difficult turn before an audience of CU mortgage specialists here when she stumbled through a PowerPoint presentation and announced at the end, "I won't take any more questions" as more than a half-dozen hands were in the air.
Then she abruptly walked off the stage, leaving the facilitator and mortgage consultant Tracy Ashfield to soothe a bewildered audience.
Marian Louden represents the FHA's industry outreach group as liaison to trade associations. While she sought to deliver a message about the affinity of FHA's history with that of credit unions, saying the agency wanted to greatly expand its relationships with CUs, she stumbled through the reading of slides and paused frequently throughout. Given that FHA products have taken on a greater importance and more CUs now want to become FHA approved lenders, that message rang true with attendees. But Louden's inability to answer specific questions about programs left many attendees wondering why she was chosen to speak on the topic before ACUMA.
While Louden promised to refer all queries to the right person at the agency for follow up, she seemed frazzled and repeated herself, finishing well before her allotted speaking time. She did stress that legislation creating the FHA and the FCU charter were both passed in 1934 with a like-minded purpose: to make homeownership possible for more Americans and provide provident credit to Americans amid a long and deep economic depression.
Louden said that the "old FHA is nonexistent and the new FHA is flexible, innovative and tech savvy." Many of the obstacles that hampered CU participation in FHA programs have been removed, she said. Lending capacity has also been increased and loss-mitigation tools added to further protect lenders from losses. The entire program has been streamlined, Louden asserted. Only six attendees' hands went up when Ashfield asked how many attendees participated in FHA loans, an indication that great strides remain for CUs to avail themselves of FHA programs.
Louden said that FHA had done 1,520 CU-driven loans in 2007, and so far in 2008 has done 568, with AmeriCU CU, Rome, N.Y.; Mountain America FCU, Salt Lake City; and America First CU, Ogden, Utah, as top producers. Before she left the stage, Louden said that "Credit unions and FHA together can solve the puzzle--we can put every American in a home."
Ashfield filled some of the remaining time, noting that doing FHA loans was "a different way of thinking. It's not like our conventional methodology of writing mortgages, so we have to change the way we think."
Louden later told Credit Union Times that she didn't have a case of stage fright but did feel uncomfortable with the stage lighting, which prevented her from seeing people in the audience.
