Easing the way to homeownership

Mortgage lending is much more than a 34-year career for Beth Eller. It’s a lifelong calling to help people find homes and build communities.

Eller, vice president of mortgage lending at Truliant Federal Credit Union, Winston-Salem, N.C., helped North Carolina mortgage lenders break new ground with end-to-end electronic mortgage closings by serving on the North Carolina Electronic Mortgage Closing Advisory Committee.

Eller joined $3.5 billion asset Truliant in September 2019. In January 2020, it became the first credit union and the second North Carolina financial institution to offer e-closings conducted entirely online in 30 days or less.

“E-closings are probably the most innovative thing to happen in 50 years,” Eller says. They arrived just in time to ease Truliant members’ pandemic-related fears about in-person contact.

Eller’s career is rooted in long-lasting family ties to real estate and mortgages. Her father died in a car accident while she was in high school, so her mother’s real estate sales career became the family’s mainstay.

Her uncle was a mortgage lender who mentored her career. Her sister also became a mortgage lender.

“It runs in our family,” Eller says. “I won’t do anything else. It’s just so wonderful to see people achieve that dream of homeownership.”

Eller is using her expertise to expand Truliant’s mortgage offerings by adding Federal Home Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) loans.

The credit union added five dedicated mortgage lending officers in 2019 plus another four officers in the Charlotte region in 2020.

These efforts and other investments improved “service, quality, and speed,” boosting mortgage loan volume 171% in less than two years.

Eller worked at banks and independent mortgage lenders before joining Truliant, where she relishes “the wonderful focus on making members’ lives better.” She sees an opportunity for credit unions to reach more homebuyers as community bank mergers close local branches.

“Now is the perfect time for credit unions to really blossom and step into that space,” she explains.

Eller sees both her work to expand the credit union’s mortgage lending and her long record of volunteer service at Mount Tabor United Methodist Church as acts of faith.

She finds serving first-time homebuyers especially fulfilling.

“Helping people own homes in a way that is good for them and good for the community is what’s important,” Eller says. “That’s what drives me.”