HOUSTON - After two years of planning, seven Houston-area creditunions have formed a new CUSO - CU Companies of Texas, LLC - toprovide members an array of fixed and variable first mortgageproducts for purchase and refinance. The seven credit unions, witha combined membership of 160,000 members, include: Cy-Fair FCU,Energy Capital CU, Houston Federal CU, Houston Municipal EmployeesFCU, MemberSource CU, PrimeWay FCU, and USE CU. Brad Crandall,president of CU Mortgage Services, New Brighton, Minn. explainedthat the genesis for CU Companies of Texas came from a case studypresentation he gave at a NACUSO conference two years ago withDennis Godfrey, CEO, Navy Federal Financial Group. After thepresentation, Crandall met with Adrian Dominguez, CEO, Credit UnionAcceptance Corp. (CUAC), Houston, a financial services CUSO, andone of his board members who were interested in forming a mortgageCUSO in Texas similar to CU Mortgage. "We started talking aboutforming a CUSO and one thing led to another," said Crandall. CUMortgage Services has a small interest in CU Companies of Texas, asdoes CU Alliance, a CU think tank. As part of the agreement, CUMortgage Services will manage and operate CU Companies of Texas"until they get their feet on the ground and have a turnkeyoperation," said Crandall who will also be president of CUCompanies of Texas LLC as well as continue to lead CU MortgageServices. He estimates that will probably take three to five years.With the new CUSO, members of the seven credit unions now have 24/7access to online mortgage information and can apply for a full menuof Fannie Mae-compliant loans any time on the CUSO's Web site -www.cucompaniesoftexas.com. CU Companies of Texas LLC has partneredwith Prime Alliance Solutions to offer members the company'sadvanced mortgage origination and approval system. Trademarkedunder the name HomeLoan ExpressT, the system allows the creditunions to originate loans in their offices or for members tooriginate their own mortgages over the Internet from their owncomputers and receive approval within minutes. CU Companies ofTexas LLC processes its own loans and maintains its own mortgageservicing on loans originated. -

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