The Follow-Up to the Follow-Up
Ask a credit union loan officer what slows a loan down. You'll hear about the follow-up long before you hear about rates or underwriting.
When I was a loan officer, most of my applications didn't stall on a decision. They stalled waiting on something small. A paystub. Proof of insurance. One more signature.
You know how it goes. A member applies, and you need one more document, so you call. Voicemail. You send an email and make a note to try again tomorrow. Tomorrow comes, you try again, and now you're following up on your follow-up.
Then the member actually replies
This is the part nobody talks about. The member does exactly what you asked. They send the paystub, maybe at night after work, maybe while you're on the phone with someone else.
And it lands in an inbox that's already full. There's a voicemail waiting. There are two members in the lobby who need help right now. By the time you dig out, that paystub is buried.
From the member's side, they're done. They sent what you asked for, and now it's quiet. They don't know the loan is waiting on us, not them. And every day it sits, the loan gets a little colder. Members have other options, and some of them are one tap away on their phone.
It's not an effort problem
Loan officers aren't dropping the ball because they don't care. I was the top producer at my credit union, and it still happened to me. My managers would call asking where an application stood, and the answer had been sitting in my inbox the whole time.
That's not a people problem. It's a capacity problem. One loan officer can't be on the phone, in the lobby and watching the inbox at the same time. The work around the loan, the reminders, the chasing, the sorting through attachments, eats the hours that should go to members.
Find out where your loans are waiting
You don't need a benchmark from me to see this. Try it with your own pipeline:
- Pull ten applications from last month that took longer than they should have.
- For each one, write down what it was waiting on, and who it was waiting on.
- Count how many were waiting on a credit decision, and how many were waiting on a document, a callback or a follow-up.
I'd bet most of your list is the second kind. And I'd bet a few of those were waiting on your team after the member had already done their part.
What should happen when the member replies
The moment a member sends what you asked for, the loan should move. The loan officer should know it came in, and the next step should already be lined up. None of that should depend on someone finding an email between phone calls.
That's what we built Donevia to do. Donevia drafts it, and your lender decides. Every call, email and application update becomes a next step your loan officer confirms, edits or denies with one click. When the paystub comes in, Donevia picks it up and lines up what happens next, so the loan keeps moving while the loan officer is out in the lobby helping someone.
Nothing reaches a member without a person saying yes. The loan officer still owns the relationship. They just stop spending their day on the follow-up to the follow-up.
The best follow-up is the one your loan officer never has to remember to send.
Eli Christiansen
Founder and CEO, Donevia