The One Form Saving Credit Unions Thousands in Lost Loan Applications

Most Credit Unions Are Losing Applicants They Don't Even Know About

Most credit unions, if not all, use a Loan Origination System (LOS) and will experience application abandonment. People land on your auto loan page, click Apply, start filling out the form, and then disappear. The application closes. The session ends. And from your credit union's perspective, that person never existed. Or you’ve paid for a started application that never converts.

No name. No email. No way to follow up. No second chance.

This isn't a niche problem. Loan origination systems are notorious for high abandonment rates, and many credit unions simply have no mechanism to capture the people who leave before hitting submit. The leads are invisible. If the LOS does provide an abandoned application reminder system, it doesn’t tie into your CRM to show full funnel customer journeys.

There's a fix for this, and it's simpler than you might think.

Enter the Step Zero Form

The concept is straightforward. Before redirecting a prospect to your LOS, you place a short, frictionless form (Including first name, last name, and email address) on your own website. We call it a Step Zero Form, because it sits in front of Step One (the application itself).

When a prospect fills out the Step Zero Form, their information is captured in HubSpot's CRM. Then they're redirected to your LOS as normal. If they complete the application, great!

But if they abandon it partway through, you now have something you didn't have before: their contact details and the ability to reach back out.

With HubSpot’s tracking code installed on your LOS, you can track whether someone has completed the application. If they haven't, a dedicated HubSpot workflow automatically enrolls them in a follow-up workflow, which is a series of emails reminding them to finish, answering common questions, or offering to connect them with a loan officer.

"Most loan origination systems have a significant abandon rate. The combination of application tracking and a Step 0 form allows us to collect non-member information, see where they dropped off in the process and remarket to them."
— Laura Turianski, Director of Accounts, Geear

What Does This Actually Look Like in Practice?

Here's a typical Step Zero sequence for an auto loan page:

• A prospect visits your auto loan page and clicks "Apply Today"
• Before reaching the LOS, they see a short form asking for their name and email
• They submit the form and are redirected to the full application
• HubSpot logs the contact and begins monitoring for application completion
• If they abandon the application, HubSpot triggers an automated email sequence. This could look like a nudge to return, a link to the application, or perhaps an offer to chat with a loan officer
• If the application is denied, a separate workflow kicks in (more on that in a future post)

The beauty is that none of this requires manual effort from your team after setup. The workflow runs automatically, around the clock, for every prospect who hits that form.

The Results Credit Unions Are Seeing

This isn't theoretical. Credit unions implementing Step Zero Forms with HubSpot have recovered around 32% of abandoned applications for unsecured loans and seen similar results across other product types. For a credit union processing hundreds of loan applications a month, that number represents meaningful recovered revenue.

Beyond the direct recovery, there's a longer-term benefit: every person who fills out the Step Zero Form becomes a trackable contact in your CRM, even if they never return to complete the application. That means you can reach them with future campaigns, seasonal promotions, or relevant product offers. This is something most credit unions simply can't do today with anonymous LOS traffic.

"Having a robust platform like HubSpot for your credit union gives you the ability to capture prospects — something most credit unions don't have today."
— Kristin Harrison, Director of Business Development, Geear

Why Most Credit Unions Don't Have This Yet

The honest answer is that most credit unions have historically focused their digital efforts on existing members. Things like servicing, cross-selling, and retention. Capturing prospective members who haven't yet joined requires a different infrastructure: website tracking, a CRM that handles non-member contacts, and automation that connects the two.

HubSpot is built for exactly this. It handles both existing members and prospects in one place, and the Step Zero Form is one of the most immediately high-impact ways to start using it.

Getting Started

The Step Zero Form is a HubSpot form embedded on your website. The more important work is on the automation side: connecting your LOS data to HubSpot, setting up the abandonment trigger, and building out the follow-up sequence.

If you already have HubSpot and haven't implemented this yet, it's one of the first things worth tackling. If you're still evaluating whether HubSpot is right for your credit union, the ability to recover abandoned applications alone often makes a compelling case.

We've onboarded HubSpot at credit unions across the country and built Step Zero workflows for dozens of them. If you want to understand what this would look like for your specific LOS setup, we're happy to talk through it.