Firelands FCU Saves Time, Retains Members, Books More Loans with Lenders Protection

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Open Lending Gradient Background

At Firelands Federal Credit Union in Ohio, Vice President of Lending Brett Montague has been surprised by the number of new loans he’s been able to book with Open Lending’s Lenders Protection™ program.

When the $264 million credit union initially implemented Lenders Protection™, Brett expected to make a couple dozen deals each month. After launching the program, it outperformed his predictions.

“We’ve been booking 60 to 70 loans each month — even 80-plus a couple of months,” Montague said. “We’ve used the program a lot more than we originally expected, which is great because a lot of our indirect portfolio is still current members. So, we have a lot of people that I know, if we weren’t in this program and we weren’t able to help them, would have financed with a larger, national lender who definitely would have charged more in interest.”

Montague added, “We’ve been extremely happy with the returns […] Even with the program and the costs associated, we’re still able to get the borrower a better rate […] and we don’t run the risk of them moving to another financial institution.”

With seamless LOS integrations, AI-powered risk analysis and fully automated loan decisions returned in just five seconds, Lenders Protection™ gives Firelands loan officers what they need to book loans quickly and easily.

“The best thing for us is the ease of actually getting a loan over to Open Lending,” Brett said. “The integration with our LOS is very, very close. Our loan officers are able to get a decision back, and it allows us, in the indirect channel, to still be very quick and get those decisions back as quickly as we can, which helps us book more loans.”

No matter how good the underwriting, some loans will go bad — but Open Lending’s A-rated insurers make it easy to settle these claims, which tend to absorb more than 85% of defaulted balances. 

“Every time we get a claim paid, our collections department is very excited about it, because it’s just one less deal they have to mess with,” Montague said. “And the bonus for us is we do have a very strong recovery, so after claim payment, we’re not positive, but we’re very, very close to a positive loss ratio with the Open Lending program.”

Interested in using Lenders Protection to create access to car ownership for more borrowers while driving portfolio growth? Schedule a demo today.

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