By the time you read this, you will be wrapping up the first week of 2017. Congratulations, only 51 more weeks to go!
With the start of the new year, I thought it might be helpful to remind everyone about who and what Pactola is. We are a one-stop-shop CUSO for everything related to business lending. CUAD actually owns 10% of Pactola and helped start the CUSO, so that all credit unions in the Dakotas would have access to local professionals who could help them with business lending. All together, we have eight senior equity owners and eighteen junior equity owners. Our ownership now includes credit unions from North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Minnesota and Ohio.
What does Pactola do in the business lending sphere? We have three main business lines. The principle reason we were established was to serve as a central servicer for participation loans. In other words, credit unions come to us because they need help participating out a loan, or because they want to buy a loan participation. We are in the middle, providing a standardized set of analysis, file management, documentation and reporting. If you need help selling or buying a loan participation, call us.
Our second largest business line is “consulting” or “in-house” services. Credit unions may want help with writing a business loan policy or participation policy. Or, they want help with underwriting, 3rd party reviews, file audits, documentation, etc. So if a credit union needs general assistance with a business loan they aren’t participating, we are here to help with that too. That includes special knowledge regarding government programs like the Small Business Administration (SBA), the USDA programs, or even things like Historic Tax Credits.
Our last business line is education. We see that credit unions want to learn more about business lending, and want to better understand the underwriting that goes into our loans, whether it is a participation or in-house loan. It used to be most of our sessions were held in the fall, but now we are spreading them out throughout the year in case people want to attend more than one. The schedule for this year is as follows:
· MBL Boot Camp (Intro to Business Lending) : March 20-21 in Sioux Falls, SD
· Commercial Real Estate Lending : May 22-23 in Minneapolis, MN
· Commercial & Industrial / Small Business Lending : August 7-8 in Omaha, NE
· Ag Lending Forum : September 25-26 in Miles City, MT
We should also mention that we’ll be helping our credit union partners at several CUAD and CUNA events throughout the year. Feel free to introduce yourself to us at any of these if you feel you could use some help. Here is a list of events we are sure to attend:
· MonDak Roundtable : Jan 10-11
· CUAD Hike the Hill in SD: Jan 25
· CUNA Business Roundtable: Feb. 7-9
· CUAD ND Legislative Reception : Feb. 21
· CUNA GAC: Feb. 26 – March 2
· CUAD Summit: April 10-12
If you hope to do more with business lending in 2017, please reach out to us. We love hearing from our old partners and new contacts alike. We care most about you succeeding, because that is the only way we can succeed.