American Heritage Federal Credit Union has reached a yearlonglending goal in just six months.

The Philadelphia-based credit union had set the goal of helpingits members save $13 million in refinanced consumer and home loansin 2013 but has reported that it reached $13.1 million inrefinances on June 1.

“Going into the new year, we wanted to put together a promotionthat would really focus attention on the fact that we are savingour members thousands of dollars by refinancing the loans they haveelsewhere with American Heritage,” said CEO Bruce Foulke. “To dothat, we had to do two things. First, we put a “savings tracker”banner on our webpage and in our branches, which keeps that growingnumber in front of members at all times. Second, we wanted to makesure that focus on refinancing was part of the conversation ouremployees were having with members.”

Foulke said the credit union's member service officers askeach member, “Have you heard about our goal for 2013?” and thenfollow up with “We want to save our members $13 million in 2013.Let me show you how much I can save you.'”

American Heritage's information systems team designed a trackingreport within the credit union's account cross-sell module whereemployees could then track member's savings compared to the loanthat was refinanced. Individual employees could then share withmembers how much they personally had saved the members they haveserviced, the branch could determine its total member loans savingsand the credit union as a whole could track the total number of allloan channels combined.

“We're very excited about the results,” says Foulke. “Mortgagerefinances continue to drive the total and our new consumer loanvolume is up $4.2 million year-to-date versus 2012. We've evenadjusted our goal to $33 million by year-end 2013.”

American Heritage FCU has 121,000 members and $1.33 billion inassets.