Lending

CUNA President/CEO Dan Mica is scheduled to discuss ways Congress can improve lending opportunities for small business and make a pitch for raising the cap on member business loans during testimony before the House Financial Services Committee tomorrow.

New Orleans -- If a $1 billion credit union borrowed $100 million in strategically laddered advances, and invested those funds in low-risk mortgage pools, it could add as much as $600,000 to interest income.

Quicken Loans, the fourth largest mortgage lender in the U.S., has rolled out a loan origination service aimed at community banks and credit unions.

The National Association of Home Builders' monthly Housing Market Index increased this month signaling that home builders are starting to have more confidence is a strengthening housing market.

In addition to Louisiana, the SBA said it is making economic injury loans available to small businesses near the Gulf of Mexico in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida impacted by the Deepwater BP oil spill.

U.S. Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a co-sponsor of H.R. 3880 legislation to raise the member business lending cap, recently reiterated his support for the increase to the Credit Union Association of New Mexico.

The rates of foreclosures in the country dropped in April for the first time since before the current economic downturn began, according to Realty Trac, a firm that bills itself as the "leading online marketplace of foreclosure properties."

The SBA has received an additional $80 million to support its 7(a) and 504 loan programs to keep capital flowing to small businesses.