Nation’s second largest federal credit union to enhance automation, efficiency and member experience with Blend

Blend announced a partnership with PenFed Credit Union to enhance its home lending operations.

As the nation’s second largest federal credit union, with over $33 billion in assets and nearly 3 million members, PenFed’s decision to partner with Blend represents a significant step towards delivering a more seamless mortgage application experience for its members, while providing its loan officers with a cutting-edge platform.

Blend: A Proven Partner to Credit Unions

Blend currently serves seven of the top 10 credit unions in the U.S. and provides deep experience and prescriptive recommendations across the origination lifecycle to the PenFed team.

“From the onset, PenFed and Blend were aligned on our vision and commitment to delivering an intuitive, easy, end-to-end experience for our members and loan officers,” said PenFed President of Mortgage, EVP Residential & Commercial Real Estate Winston Wilkinson. “Blend’s proven track record with credit unions combined with their experience provided us confidence in choosing them as our long-term strategic partner.”

Intelligent Automation for a Streamlined Member Experience

Blend’s ability to integrate with PenFed’s existing systems and deliver extensive automation throughout the origination process was another core component to the partnership. Blend’s ecosystem of 70+ pre-built native integrations enables the PenFed team to automate key processes, including the generation and delivery of loan conditions and documents.

This automation not only simplifies the member experience by offering a fully digital, self-serve mortgage process, but also enhances loan team efficiency through real-time document review and task automation.

“We’re thrilled to partner with PenFed as they continue to set the bar for digital transformation,” said Head of Blend Nima Ghamsari. “At Blend, we've spent the past decade building a platform that encapsulates every aspect of the home lending process––from initial exploration all the way until the loan is closed and the funds are received. We're excited to work with PenFed to bring these to life and deliver personalized, efficient experiences that scale with the needs of their members.”

Maximizing LO Productivity with Consumer-Grade Tools

In addition to the time savings through origination, processing, and underwriting, Blend’s consumer-grade loan officer tools will empower PenFed to serve more members, capture more business, and streamline back-end processes––all on one platform.

“Top-performing loan officers often prefer to manage their own workflows,” noted Wilkinson. “Blend’s advanced loan officer tools allow us to offer that flexibility, whether it’s deciding when to pull credit or how to engage with a borrower, giving our team more control and the ability to serve our members more effectively.”

Blend’s LO Toolkit supports loan officers on all key workflows across the entire loan process in one workspace, enabling them to be trusted advisors and operate more efficiently. The toolkit features include the ability to track pipeline, communicate instantly with borrowers, create new leads, and manage key application milestones in one place.