San Francisco, CA (April 1, 2025) |
Blend Labs, Inc. (NYSE: BLND), a leading origination platform for digital banking solutions, announced that seven of the top ten credit unions in the United States are now leveraging the Blend platform. Trusted by hundreds of financial institutions, these credit unions are citing increased digital deposit account openings, loan origination growth and improved member experiences, helping to set themselves apart from competitors and position for stronger growth.
In 2024 alone, financial institutions processed nearly $1.2 trillion in loan applications through Blend, demonstrating the platform's robust capabilities and its growing importance among credit unions. This milestone highlights Blend's increasing influence in the financial services industry and its commitment to providing credit unions with innovative digital lending and account opening solutions.
"Credit unions stand at a pivotal moment, where embracing digital transformation is no longer optional, but essential for sustained success. Many are held back by legacy systems and fragmented technology, hindering their ability to deliver the personalized, member-centric experiences that define the credit union difference," said Nima Ghamsari, Co-founder and Head of Blend. "By leveraging a unified platform that streamlines processes and unlocks the power of member data across multiple banking products, credit unions can not only enhance operational efficiency and drive down costs, but also deepen member relationships and foster financial wellness.”
Blend’s continuous upgrades and extensive integrations make it a future-proof solution, giving credit unions confidence that it will evolve with their needs.
Blend's platform delivers simple, digital and data-driven end-to-end journeys for loan origination, account opening and consumer onboarding. Blend offers a Mortgage Suite and a Consumer Banking Suite with pre-built, out-of-the-box solutions including deposits, credit cards, personal loans, auto loans, and HELOCs. Setting it apart from other solutions is its omnichannel experience, AI-powered automation, a unified platform supporting multiple products, pre-approval and cross-sell capabilities, strong partnerships, and expertise in regulatory compliance and security.
Credit Unions Power Growth and Efficiency with Blend
Langley Federal Credit Union: One of the top 100 largest credit unions in the U.S. with $5.3 billion in assets, Langley Federal Credit Union (Langley FCU) partnered with Blend for a unified origination platform that could power their full suite of consumer deposit and lending solutions. Before partnering with Blend, one of Langley’s biggest challenges with their deposit account solution was the difficulty funding new accounts. With proven experience building best-in-class digital experiences for mortgages, home equities and consumer loans on a single platform for 140 of the top 1,000 depository institutions, Blend came uniquely positioned to meet Langley’s goals. Blend was also the only provider that offered a combined solution on a single platform.
Another critical feature was Blend’s counteroffer capability, helping to drive a 37% increase in new digital deposit account openings and a 25 percentage point drop in contact center intervention. While Langley offers a second chance account for members below a specified credit score, they had no way to digitally extend counter offers to those members until Blend.
“We were looking for a holistic online origination system,” said Fred Hagerman, Chief Operations Officer at Langley. “We found the experience with other technology providers to be fragmented, meaning that you might get deposits from one company, consumer loans from another, and mortgage originations from somebody else. Blend was the only provider we could find that offered the combined solutions on one platform.”
BCU: Another credit union to partner with Blend is Chicago-based BCU. With over $6 billion in assets, BCU was seeking an innovative, digital-first strategy to secure its foothold in the digital age. Member experiences have always been paramount for BCU, and as experiences have largely become digital and hybrid, the BCU team understood that embracing digital transformation and offering the latest technological tools can increase efficiency, enhance security, reduce costs across the board, and most importantly — improve member experiences. With Blend, BCU has seen remarkable success, including a 50% increase in conversion rates for digital deposit account openings and more than doubling the start-to-submit rate for member applications.
"Since partnering with Blend, we've seen our conversion rates jump from 40% to 60%,” said Bhavna Guglani, Chief Digital Officer at BCU. “Another big win for us has been on the automation front with identity verification. We're currently trending at 85% automation. We've seen our funding go from 20% to 40%, and are also exploring many other future opportunities like shopping cart experiences and fighting fraud."
Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union (RBFCU): Texas's largest credit union, Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union (RBFCU), also partnered with Blend to enhance the member experience. Managing $1B per year in mortgage production, the credit union wanted a newer, more robust technology solution that could better serve both members and employees. In July of 2024, RBFCU went live with Blend-built Mortgage, HELOCs, VOI and traditional Close solutions, and in just one month, saw a 12% increase in submitted applications. Additionally, RBFCU member engagement was about a 50/50 split between web and phone. Since partnering with Blend, there has been a shift back to web interactions.
"We want to ensure that our digital experience is fully satisfying for a growing segment of our membership that expects to handle their financial transactions digitally. We see Blend playing a big role in that strategy,” said Victor Williams, Senior Vice President of Mortgage for RBFCU.
Trusted by the industry’s most innovative financial institutions, Blend is the infrastructure powering the future of banking. Since its founding, the company has received numerous awards and accolades, positioning Blend as the clear industry leader in digital loan origination and digital banking solutions, serving hundreds of financial institutions.