We're committed to cultural change, we've set our sights on a top three market position within three years. What's next? The right product mix for your members and your communities.

What's the right mix for the next eighteen months? Back to basics is our recommendation, mortgage lending, like high fashion, has gone retro. Conventional, conforming fixed rate and straight-forward adjustable rate loans are sexy for one simple reason: members understand them, and can affordably sustain them. Most people, with the exception of your more sophisticated borrowers, are done with the exotics. Another item for your menu: Government Loans. Don't miss Strategy Fourteen, it gives you the skinny on this important throwback mortgage product.

Don't forget, too, that affordability products remain important. It's easy to lose sight of the fact affordable housing and affordable lending remain a significant issue for our members and for our country as a whole.

Our portfolios are an important lending tool for this market.  An astonishing prediction:  by 2009 there will be 40% fewer mortgage brokers plying their trade, due, in part, to the fact that their sources of funds have or will all but disappear. Portfolio lenders, like credit unions, will take their place.  The CU Housing RoundTable will publish a White Paper this Autumn entitled, "Re-imaging Your Balance Sheet". The Paper will address, in part, the product mix credit unions should consider, and the practical and prudent ways in which we can use our balance sheets to offer them.

Think simple, think affordable while fine-tuning your product mix.