Business ProfileforWashington State Employees Credit Union

My husband and I had a troubling experience with WSECU. We submitted a form for a joint HELOC via the WSECU website. When I previously applied for home loans in the past, the bank or credit union mortgage officer always contacted me to chat about my application and needs before pulling our credit and processing the application, but WSECU did not contact us before pulling our credit. We only learned that they pulled our credit via notifications we received from multiple credit monitoring services. Within a day or two, we were emailed a counteroffer by WSECU and were disappointed that they did not contact us to chat about it. We replied by email with an explanation of our needs and concerns about their counteroffer. However, our reply was completely ignored, and their only response was to dryly ask for the information requested to process the original counteroffer. This made it clear that our needs did not matter. However, the most troubling was that to approve the ****** WSECU requested a copy of our marriage certificate! I felt that requesting our marriage certificate was highly discriminatory and outrageous because both of our names are on the title of our home, and our credit and income made us qualify for their counteroffer. Importantly, I shared this experience with my parents and other straight couples that have taken out joint home loans, and no one mentioned that they were asked for a marriage certification! As a gay couple and as people of color, it is already difficult to navigate business and financial transactions due to biases, so we were shocked that WSECU wanted us to prove that we were married in order to get a home loan. We decided that we would absolutely not take their offer, and we left it. We feel strongly that WSECU lending practices added extra, unnecessary steps/barriers for us to get a home loan, and were thereby discriminatory in nature. We strongly recommend that gay couples, people of color, and allies avoid WSECU.

We're very sorry again to hear you didn't have a positive experience applying for a Home Equity loan. We apologize for any miscommunication and the confusion caused by the way the request for documentation was shared. As we mentioned previously, WSECU is committed to providing equal lending opportunities to all individuals, regardless of race,color, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other protected class. We believe in fostering a diverse and inclusive lending experience where everyone is treated with respect and fairness, but we missed the **** for you and we apologize for that. If you'd like to discuss the outcome of your application in more detail, please feel free to call us at ************ so we can connect you with our Home Equity team. In the meantime, your experience has been shared as feedback with the appropriate parties for awareness.