The Servion Group was founded in 1987 as CU Mortgage Services, Inc., by three Minnesota credit unions – Twin City Co-ops Federal Credit Union (SPIRE Credit Union), City-County Federal Credit Union (purchased by WINGS Financial Credit Union), and NWA Federal Credit Union (WINGS Financial Credit Union) – looking to offer competitive mortgage solutions to their members.

The CEOs of our three original owners met over dinner to discuss how they could gain mortgage market share and prevent competitors from using mortgages to cross-sell to their members. They realized that by combining forces, they could offer a superior product than if they offered a solution on their own. That is the definition of economies of scales, which is our core purpose.

Servion was founded to provide financial institutions a “retail” mortgage partnership where we compensate them for taking application and referring mortgages to us. In 2010, our leadership team saw that the competitive landscape was changing for us and for our partners. Financial institutions needed a partnership option that increased the profitability of first mortgage originations. Our correspondent mortgage channel – launched in 2011 – was an answer to that need. Correspondent partners increase profitability by managing more of the mortgage process.

Since then, our correspondent channel has diversified to include even more options for financial institutions. To meet the needs of our owners and partners, we also have diversified our business lines to cover mortgage, title, realty, financial planning, investments, and commercial lending services. We have launched other mortgage service to resolve pain points for financial institutions such as quality control, appraisal review, contract processing, and mortgage servicing. We also launched Commercial Title Services in 2016.

On Sept. 19, 2017, we celebrated our 30-year anniversary and announced that we would be changing our name from CU Companies to The Servion Group. The rebrand, which became effective on January 1, 2018, reflected our growth during our 30-year history to 60 credit union owners and to more than 300 financial institutions.

Our solutions now span mortgage, title, realty, financial advisory, and commercial lending resources. But, even as our business has grown, the core of our culture hasn’t change. We were formed by financial institutions to serve financial institutions. We continue to have that Be the Solution mindset; we honor our history by placing service – our core principle – at the root of our name: Servion.