The 2014 economycontinues to show promising consumer loan growth – quarterly datain new vehicle loans by themselves show an increase of 14% and somemarkets experienced growth as high as 33% (Callahan, 2014). But asthe industry continues to suffer attrition in mortgages and homeequity, the portfolio gap becomes more and more apparent. How doyou fill it?

The answer lies in returning to your roots, the foundation onwhich your credit union was built. That would be your members.

One way to look at this is to imagine that your credit union nolonger has access to the indirect loan channel of your auto loanportfolio. When you take that away, what does your portfolio looklike? This exercise was recently put into play with a leadingcredit union and much to their surprise, they found that less than5% of their membership was taking advantage of auto lending throughtheir credit union.