Member Business Financial Services (MBFS) has launched a shared Relationship Manager service forcredit unions in Pennsylvania to share the expense and overhead of a lender in a manner that makes financial sense. Two Relationship Managers, located in southeast and south central Pennsylvania, are servicing business members of eight credit unions. The service was launched in fall 2014 and plans on expanding to four additional markets in the Mid-Atlantic States in 2015.

This service has been in the works since the fall of 2013 and was initiated by a collaborative meeting of regional credit unions. MBFS found that credit unions had difficulty hiring the expertise, justifying the cost of full-time employee in-house and managing the personnel; therefore, they worked on a model with partner credit unions to find the ideal solution for their needs. Credit unions participating in the shared Relationship Manager in southeast Pennsylvania include: American Heritage FCU, Viriva Community CU, Keystone FCU, and Eagle One FCU. In south central Pennsylvania Belco Community CU, Hershey FCU, Lebanon FCU, and Lanco FCU have collaborated on this new initiative.

MBFS’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Ritter provided his thoughts on the new service: “Business lending CUSOs in the mid-Atlantic states have traditionally done a fine job at supporting the back office functions of business lending. However, for many small and mid-sized credit unions it was challenging to reach out to the local business community. Our new initiative helps with those efforts in connecting them with quality loan prospects. It would be very difficult for our credit unions to justify an additional full-time employee but to have access to a quarter to a third of a person make perfect financial sense. Also, this collaborative approach allows for all the credit unions that share in the lender to share in the loans-regardless of who the lead lender is.”

MBFS is a Credit Union Service Organization (CUSO) that provides loan servicing, portfolio management services, loan underwriting, coordination of loan participations and preparation of loan documents. MBFS provides services to 22 credit unions and services over $250 million in member business loans. MBFS has 12 owner Credit Unions that include: American Heritage Federal Credit Union, American Spirit Federal Credit Union, Choice One Community Federal Credit Union, Discovery Federal Credit Union, Eagle One Federal Credit Union, Keystone Federal Credit Union, P&G Mahoopany Employees Federal Credit Union, Penn East Federal Credit Union, People First Federal Credit Union, Service 1st Federal Credit Union, Tobyhanna Army Depot Federal Credit Union, and Viriva Community Credit Union.