By Mike McGinnis, SVP, Chief Investment Officer
Loan participations offer credit unions a flexible and strategic way to manage loan portfolios, diversify risk and enhance liquidity. When a lender decides to sell a loan participation, they essentially sell stakes in a loan pool to other institutions, turning long-term earnings into immediate cash while sharing the risk and reducing exposure to certain loan classes.
Today’s market provides sellers with multiple avenues to reach potential buyers. The two primary approaches are direct placement, a 1:1 strategy, and placement in a marketplace, providing broad visibility to many potential buyers.
Customize with direct placement
Direct placement of loan participations is akin to a real estate agent who shows desirable properties to her clients before they are posted on the MLS and available to the general public. Here, sellers directly engage with one or several potential buyers, typically through an intermediary market maker, creating a one-to-one relationship.
The advantages of direct placement lie in its tailored approach and high level of control. Sellers can work closely with buyers, ensuring that all terms of the loan participation align with both parties' goals while customizing the offering to address specific concerns or needs, such as underwriting standards, asset type preferences, or participation structure. Direct placement also provides a degree of privacy to the process and can speed the sale along if a willing buyer and seller are quickly matched.
However, while direct placement allows sellers to target specific buyers, the trade-off is limited market reach. Taking a loan participation on the open market may uncover more demand than expected and even open opportunities for further sales or preferred terms in a seller’s market.
Expand your market reach
Loan participation platforms are designed to connect sellers and buyers in a broad marketplace. Much like searching for properties on Zillow, a loan participation platform creates maximum visibility for institutions to showcase their loan participations to a broad network of potential buyers – all within the credit union system. This marketplace model allows potential buyers to browse and filter listings based on their investment criteria, helping them to quickly find participation opportunities that match their strategic goals.
A loan participation platform provides a seller with a far larger pool of potential buyers than they might reach through direct placement. This increased visibility may expedite the sales process. A marketplace model also provides standardization in the offering, which can simplify the transaction.
Two valuable options, it’s your choice
For sellers in the loan participation market, choosing the right approach can depend on their priorities—whether that’s securing a close relationship with a specific buyer, as in direct placement, or casting a wider net to attract multiple offers, a marketplace model.
Catalyst offers both direct placement and a marketplace program, the Loan Participation Exchange (LPX). The best approach depends on the seller's priorities, the current demand for the offering and more. The best strategy may change from time-to-time and from portfolio-to-portfolio, even for a single institution. For that reason, it’s important to work with a loan participation expert, such as Catalyst, who can advise a seller on the best strategy and execute it with precision. Whether buying or selling, loan participations are a powerful tool for credit unions. To learn more about Catalyst’s loan participation strategic guidance and the Loan Participation Exchange platform, contact us today.