St Paul’s Garda Credit Union has a nationwide membership base of almost 34,000 Garda, Garda Staff and family members, and offers a wide range of financial products and services, including mortgages. While the Credit Union could offer variable-rate mortgages, they did not have the capability to offer fixed-rate mortgages, which was a growing member demand.
To address this challenge, St Paul’s Credit Union developed a new strategy to offer more competitive mortgage rates for their members. However, they needed to implement Wellington IT’s enhanced mortgage module to achieve this. This new module made it possible to offer fixed-rate mortgages which will help grow their portfolio from €20m in 2022 to, based on current demand, €40m within the next 12 months!
Members are looking for stability in their interest rates and repayments, which is what fixed rates can provide. With the new mortgage module giving us the ability to offer fixed-rate mortgages to our members, which are some of the most competitive in the market, we can continue to significantly grow our mortgage loan portfolio and better serve our members”
Operations Manager
St Paul’s Garda Credit Union
With Scion’s enhanced mortgage module, St Paul’s can offer more competitive rates than ever before. With the ability to offer fixed and variable rates, they can offer their members more choices, whilst also attracting brand new members to the Credit Union, now and into the future.
In 2022, St Paul`s Garda Credit Union reduced the variable mortgage rate and introduced two new fixed-term rates, all of which were made possible within their new mortgage module.
The new rates appeal to both first-time buyers & switchers as the cost of living continues to rise, with the rate of inflation and members are looking for ways to cut the bottom line in household expenses. Having the ability to offer fixed rates, variable rates, or a combination of the two through Scion allows us to provide a more competitive mortgage offering for the times we’re living in now, but also for the future.”
Operations Manager
St Paul’s Garda Credit Union
As St Paul’s staff were already issuing mortgages through their core system, Scion, they are very familiar with the mortgage process which meant they could get up and running straight away. Furthermore, key additional fields that were added to the mortgage module allow them to build letter offers automatically through Scion.
With the new mortgage module, staff can add extra fields such as solicitor information, property details and valuations. This allows them to build a loan offer letter using ODP documents, automatically through Scion, reducing the manual work needed”
Operations Manager
St Paul’s Garda Credit Union
As part of the mortgage module, Wellington IT developed a switching service to enable Credit Unions to convert existing fixed-rate mortgages to variable rates, to ensure that they can retain existing members with mortgages, whilst also, in some cases, saving those members money.
“Once the fixed period of our existing mortgage book expires, the mortgage module will notify staff prior to the change. This tool will save our staff time and ensure we provide our members with exceptional member service, by keeping them informed of any upcoming or new interest rate changes”
– Simon Foley, Operations Manager, St Paul’s Garda Credit Union
