9 tips to drive more loans

I work with financial institutions of all sizes and there are three common goals that come up time after time: more loans, more customers (members) and increased deposits.

“More Loans” can vary by institution and your approach can be vastly different depending on the tools you have available. High tech core processors, instant decisioning and data driven loan processes are ideal – but what if the tools available to you are limited?

Here are 9 loan driving tips you can implement regardless of asset size:

1. Online Loan Applications: Can members apply quickly from your homepage? Loan apps that require sign-in, PDF forms or branch visits are barriers that may send members to your competition.

2. Mobile-Friendly: Test your website and loan apps from a mobile device.   The most effective forms have auto fill capability and do not require the “pinch and pull” method. 

3. Member Lens: Test your loans apps and fill them out from beginning to end. Are there any roadblocks or broken links along the way you can smooth out?

4. Differentiate: Do you offer no application fees and local decisioning? Feature what makes your loan product different than the competition

5. Onboarding: Cross-selling all of your products at account opening is like expecting a marriage proposal on your first date. Add your loan products to your new account onboarding process. A common onboarding program is a 3-6 month drip program that starts with a welcome letter and or welcome call and drips marketing messages with a goal to convert the new account holder to additional products during that time frame.

6. Branded: Members know and trust you. While embedded is best, if you are linking to a third-party tool during the loan application process, be sure to have your brand in the URL as well as on the page/form itself to feature your trusted brand.

7. Remove Alerts: When linking to a secure vendor loan application – reconsider that pop-up message warning members to be careful about using the site you just directed them toward. That’s the quickest way to an abandoned application.

8. Make it Quick: Streamline the application.   Do you ask layers and layers of questions?  Loan apps with pages of questions and dozens of fields have high abandon rates.  

9. Retarget: Retarget those who abandon the loan application process.  Are you using a loan form that allows you to track abandoned forms and gather information for retargeting?

Looking for a printable tip sheet? Grab my free “Drive More Loans” printable in my free resources section for credit union marketers.