A credit union caught between a drastic decline in demand formortgage refinance and an only slowly growing purchase moneybusiness has launched an effort aimed at real estate agents torecover its position.

The 50,000-member, $1 billion Eli Lilly Federal Credit Union sawits mortgage business slide significantly in 2013, moving from $215million in new housing finance loans in 2012 to $125 million in2013.

“Mortgage refinance just fell off a cliff for us last year,”said Rick Thornburg, senior vice president for lending at theIndianapolis credit union. He said the loss was neither tapered norgradual but rather precipitous as interest rates began to rise orlook like they were about to rise.

The good news in the numbers, Thornburg said, was that ELFCUtook the opportunity to begin the transition to making morepurchase money loans, tightening its guidelines, and implementingprocedures to underwrite loans in a more timely manner, a factorwhich is particularly important when making loans that financeproperty purchases.

The result was that that 70% of 2013's $125 million came inpurchase money loans.

“The push we have launched now is meant to move us further alongthat path and help us make up that $90 million in lost loanvolume,” Thornburg said.

The credit union has hired six new loan originators with proventrack records in making purchase money loans to help it reach outto real estate professionals in the Indianapolis area. It has alsomade sure that its entire loan origination, underwriting andclosing staff are under one roof, further simplifying andstreamlining the mortgage process.

“My office is just down the hall from the originators’ officesas well as the underwriters,” Thornburg said. “Whenever they wantto ask me a question or need something explained or moved along,they know just where to find me and can get me quickly.”

Thornburg explained that ELFCU had been very specific in thesort of professionals it wanted.

“The credit union has a very good profile in the community so,frankly, we were a little bit overwhelmed at the response to our ad[for new originators], Thornburg explained. “But the numbers were agood thing because they allowed us to be pretty choosy in ourselections,” Thornburg said, adding that if a candidate in themeeting made comments about looking forward to how many big dealsthey could do and how much money they could make, ELFCU generallydidn't keep going with that person.

The result had been originators which were experienced in themortgage field but new to credit unions and who needed to bebrought up to speed.

Topics included the role of profit in the program as well asexpectations about their attitude toward members and what a fieldof membership meant to their work, he explained, adding that thenew staff had been enthusiastic about what they learned.

“You need to understand that mortgage bankers are generally notthought of that well after all that happened [in the crisis], andit can be a pretty brutal business other places,” Thornburg said.“So there were a couple of the new people who had been verysuccessful in the business, but had been taking time over theChristmas break to consider whether they wanted to keep going init.

“Now those folks are loving working for us and think they havedied and gone to heaven, that's what coming here has meant tothem.”

Hiring originators who are already known in the real estatecommunity and who know real estate agents is an efficient way ofintroducing ELFCU to groups of professionals who have never usedthe credit union, Thornburg explained.

“We believe we are very well positioned for the local market in2014,” Thornburg said.