About Lake Michigan Credit Union
Founded by schoolteacher Lloyd F. Hutt in 1933, Lake Michigan Credit Union (LMCU) began as a tiny, home-grown credit union serving Grand Rapids educators. Now it’s the largest credit union headquartered in West Michigan, with nearly 600,000 members, 53 locations across Michigan and Florida, and 110 loan officers. In addition to residential mortgages, LMCU provides a full range of financial services, from high interest-bearing checking accounts and personal loans to investments and commercial lending products. Its annual loan volume is about $3 billion. LMCU has $13 billion in assets and a mortgage servicing portfolio of more than $14.3 billion.
LMCU strives to help businesses grow and neighborhoods thrive through homeownership. Its dedication to making a positive impact on its communities and members is demonstrated through active donations and sponsorships, an annual scholarship, and staff volunteerism. Additionally, in 2023, Callahan & Associates named LMCU #1 in the nation for its Return of the Member recognition among U.S. credit unions with assets over $10 billion.
Challenge
Because its former loan origination system (LOS) was struggling to keep pace with rapidly changing industry regulations, LMCU began an intensive search for a new platform in 2019. “We were constantly late to market with regulatory changes, and it was too big of a risk to fall behind in compliance,” said the company’s Chief Lending and Experience Executive Eric Burgoon, who has been with the credit union for nearly 13 years.
LMCU also wanted to introduce more automation into its processes to increase its flexibility so it could shift with industry cycles without changing staffing levels.
“We needed to partner with an industry leader in compliance as well as technology to deliver an LOS that would improve our flexibility, increase our efficiency, and let us support our members with a fast, digital mortgage experience,” Burgoon said.
Solution
After a search that lasted nearly two years due to a few starts and pauses, LMCU selected the EmpowerⓇ LOS from Dark Matter Technologies (Dark Matter). The Empower LOS provides the critical components lending professionals need, including compliance testing, fee support, task-based automation, available point-of-sale portals and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) add-ons, and a robust network of integrated third-party services such as product and pricing engines (PPE).
Implementation experts from Dark Matter supported the credit union’s team through every step of the platform configuration and testing process to ensure a smooth changeover and an exceptional user experience. The timing coincided with Dark Matter’s rebirth as an independent company under the Constellation Software Inc. umbrella.
“We were impressed that Dark Matter maintained a strong partnership with us even as their team was undergoing significant changes themselves,” said Burgoon. “That stability, the excellent communication we experienced, and the technology expertise they brought reinforced for us that the Empower LOS was the platform we were looking for and Dark Matter was the partner we needed in this endeavor.”
Results
LMCU is leveraging the Empower LOS to increase efficiency and remain in compliance with local and federal regulations. The credit union has documented several additional positive outcomes:
Fewer fee cures
The compliance testing built into the Empower LOS enabled LMCU to reduce costly adjustments significantly, saving thousands of dollars each month and helping its loan teams provide members with more accurate loan estimates.
“We were first driven to find a new LOS due to the compliance issues we were experiencing, often resulting in fee cures exceeding $15,000 a month,” said Burgoon. “We have seen enormous savings from the compliance support built into the Empower LOS.”
Loans are closing up to 5 days faster
Using the dynamic, task-based automation built into the Empower LOS allows LMCU to shave about a week off processing times for each loan, increasing the quantity of mortgage loans the credit union can process each month.
“A lot of our time savings are on the front end, during appraisal, title, and disclosure setup,” said Burgoon. “Where everything used to be done manually by employees, now the system can automatically execute several tasks simultaneously. The heightened efficiency has increased our mortgage team’s ability to handle and process all the opportunities they are presented with while providing outstanding service to our members by closing their loans faster.”
Humans can focus on higher-value work
Prior to adopting the Empower LOS, LMCU had a team of 12 people dedicated to monitoring and ordering verifications and documents. With dynamic, automated workflows to manage repetitive order processing, that staffing level has been reduced to one person. As a result, many of the credit union’s more seasoned employees could be moved into higher-value roles or promoted to oversee other teams.
“We had all these highly skilled people we were underutilizing to handle simple stare-and-compare processing tasks,” said Burgoon. “Now that we have the Empower LOS to automate repetitive work, those employees could be reallocated to where we need them and focus on providing improved services and solutions to our members.”
While LMCU is pleased with the efficiency and process enhancements the Empower LOS is already providing to its lending team, it plans to implement additional features in the future, including Dark Matter’s Loan Officer Portal and Borrower Portal, dashboards for loan officers and their customers that streamline communications, track open items, and help move originations forward through closing.
“We took our time to strategically select and implement the right solution, and it’s paying dividends,” said Burgoon. “Leveraging the correct technology backed by a highly communicative and responsive team of experts has led to internal growth, substantial cost savings, and a better overall digital mortgage experience for our members.”
About Dark Matter Technologies:
Operating with the nimble nature of a startup and the disciplined maturity of one of the industry’s leading providers, Dark Matter Technologies delivers cutting-edge technology, unparalleled automation and relentless innovation to leading mortgage lenders and companies nationwide. For more information, visit https://www.dmatter.com.