CU Xpress Lease Partners Realize Exponential Growth

HAUPPAUGE, NY, Jan. 29 – CU Xpress Lease (www.cuxpress.com) today announced an exponential growth experienced by two of its partner credit unions – Teachers Federal Credit Union (TFCU) in Hauppauge, NY and Fitchburg, MA-based IC Federal Credit Union – that offer the product line.

CU Xpress, part of the GrooveCar, Inc. (www.groovecarinc.com) family of brands, provides an alternative automotive leasing product to the credit union industry through its low residual value risk program that allows incremental loan growth, increased efficiency and the ability to compete at the highest level.

The company has leased more than 36,000 vehicles through December 2013 in a portfolio exceeding $1.5 billion. TFCU, which was one of the first credit unions to join the program, has experienced year-over-year growth in excess of 277 per cent. The $4.8 billion asset TFCU (www.teachersfcu.org) serves more than 233,000 members.

"We introduced leasing in 2007 to diversify our product line while expanding our access to prime borrowers," said Nancy Orlando, senior vice president-credit, TFCU. "Since then, we have seen exponential growth as our members have embraced leasing as their preferred auto financing option."

IC FCU (www.iccreditunion.org) also provides leases through CU Xpress and has experienced over a 150 per cent growth since 2012. It has assets near $495 millionand a member base around 21,000.

Frank Rinaudo, GrooveCar’s senior vice president, emphasized that, “Leasing not only propels a credit union into becoming a full service automotive lender, it provides a doorway into capturing a substantial portion of new vehicle market share, in fact, in certain areas of the country, leasing represents more than 50% of the new vehicle market.Plus, there are far fewer lease lender options for dealers to choose from when compared to traditional finance options. This significantly increases the opportunity for our credit union partners to pick up substantial volume without compromising credit and interest rate risk. One of the key points these growth numbers indicate is that leasing is a strong product in multiple markets and it is viable for credit unions of different sizes and demographics.”