TUKWILA, Wash. -- Prime Alliance first had Fannie and now hasFreddie.

Until now, Prime Alliance had an exclusive strategic agreementwith Fannie Mae that goes back to 2001, when Prime Alliance wasfounded. The PA solution has Fannie Mae's Desktop Underwriter builtin, so credit union loans are approved using a secondary marketdecisioning engine. That partnership has been extended to 2016.

As a result of a newly announced partnership, Prime Alliancecredit unions will now have access to Freddie Mac's standard onlinesuite of mortgage underwriting and processing tools,LoanProspector.com, as well as various specialized tools such astraining opportunities and credit opportunities.

"We built a lot of who we are with Fannie Mae and have anintimate relationship with them," said Prime Alliance President/CEOJoe Brancucci, emphasizing that the company's new relationship withFreddie Mac does not change, replace or modify its partnership withFannie Mae. "With our relationship with Freddie [Mac] we'veimplemented and integrated Loan Prospector, but it's a differentkind of relationship than the one we have with Fannie Mae. Wewanted to be sure we didn't minimize our relationship with FannieMae. Freddie Mac is now a second set of relationships that givescredit unions choices. It's the best of all worlds for our creditunion clients."

He added, "Our objective is to offer credit unions alternatives,and we thought Freddie Mac had a number of products and servicesthat would complement the Prime Alliance/Fannie Mae alliance."

Referring to PA's strategy of choices, Brancucci described thetwo types. The first is the real estate and mortgage-relatedservices provided by Prime Alliance. Credit unions, he said, needaccess to CUSOs since CU competitors own many of the companies thatsell services to credit unions.

To that end, Prime Alliance has formed over the past few yearsPrime Alliance Real Estate Services, Prime Valuation Services andPrime Alliance Loan Servicing. The second type of choice, saidBrancucci, expands the ability of credit unions to lend to allmembers by increasing the range of products, how those products areunderwritten and how they're priced. "Adding Freddie Mac's LoanProspector to the Prime Alliance technology is an example of thiskind of choice," he said.

Freddie Mac's Iliana Ghanem, vice president, community lending,said Freddie Mac's partnership with Prime Alliance means it will beable to do business with more credit unions than it couldpreviously because of some CUs' loyalty to Prime Alliance. Inaddition, there are CUs that already do business with Freddie Macthat Ghanem opined may have wanted to work with Prime Alliance inthe past but couldn't.

There are currently 1,460 credit unions with a Prime Alliancesite either directly or indirectly through a CUSO and otheraggregators. The company is doing approximately 12,000 firstmortgage loans a month, and Brancucci said while that figure is"static" over 2005, the company has seen much of its refinance loanportfolio being replaced by purchase money "which in this market isa good thing."

Brancucci added, "Our relationships with Fannie Mae and FreddieMac will allow credit unions to focus more on strategic issues andencourage innovation by both GSEs to address emerging markets andthe way credit unions do business. It allows the GSEs to presentchoices to our credit unions that will make our clients moresuccessful." [email protected]