Staffing Your MBL Program
What skills, experience and training is necessary?
By Brian McLaughlin
 
Debunking the Myths of Financing Franchises
Tips for business lenders
By Joanna Bruno

Credit Union MBL Portfolio Expanding
Callahan & Associates reports that, as of the end of June, member business lending in credit unions was up 8.3 percent from the previous year.

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Blog: Business Lending Idea Worth Stealing
Earlier this year, Chase and LivingSocial teamed up to grant small business owners lots of cash. Then more recently Michigan State University Federal Credit Union in East Lansing, Mich., ran a startUP Challenge to reward a local entrepreneur with funds to help start a new business. Can your CU copy these great ideas?

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Monitoring Your Business Lending Program
Regulators are placing a strong emphasis on member business lending issues during their exam efforts, making it essential for every credit union to have an effective strategic game plan in place. The new CUES Advanced School of Business Lending™ will delve into MBL issues for those credit unions that already have a program in place and for graduates of the CUES School of Business Lending™.

The school will be held March 11-15 in Miami. A week-long program, the school will be led by the founders of Hipereon, Inc., Redmond, Wash., Jim Devine and Bob Hogan. The pair will lend their expertise gained from more than three years of ongoing training experience with hundreds of state and federal regulators.

As far back as June 2011, Devine and Hogan noted the increase in regulatory attention on MBL. During a webinar presentation for CUES, Hogan cautioned that examiners might find previously acceptable business plans and strategies to be too risky going forward. “You might have to have a more logical defensive strategy of what it is you are doing and why you are doing it.”

That strategy should also include a separate function for credit administration and underwriting, according to Devine. He sees regulators looking for a very proactive thought process. Are you monitoring ongoing performance in your business members? Are you focused on downside risk issues? Your system needs to be on top of problems well in advance, so you have opportunities to work with the member before the problem becomes a serious problem.

Hogan and Devine will go in-depth on underwriting and credit administration and other topics, including:

• MBL underwriting vs. MBL credit administration;
• establishing the allowance for loan & lease losses;
• managing problem loans;
• business loan collections and foreclosure;
• handling other real estate owned properties; and
• managing loan charge-offs.

“What regulators want to know is that you have a game plan in place that is strategically orientated. They don’t want you chasing incremental business. They really want to know that there is a true organizational sense to what’s happening,” Devine said.

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Calendar

New! CUES Advanced School of Business Lending™
March 11-15
Hyatt Miami at the Blue

CUES School of Business Lending™
School I: Business Lending Fundamentals
April 29-May 3
Embassy Suites, Downtown Chicago

CUES School of Business Lending™
School II: Financial Analysis and Diagnostic Assessment
July 15-19
Hyatt Cambridge
Boston/Cambridge

CUES School of Business Lending™
School III: Strategic Business Lending
Sept. 9-13
Crowne Plaza Seattle Downtown