Although Gateway Credit Union and Yellow Brick Road made a slow start to their 10-month old alliance the pace is quickening, principals say.Paul Thomas, CEO of Gateway, and Mark Bouris, CEO of Yellow Brick Road, talked optimistically about the alliance this week. It is seen as central to the growth plans of each business.The 2010 annual report for Gateway, published this month, shows that term loans advanced by Gateway increased only five per cent, to $462 million, over the year to June 2010, a rate of growth only half that of the credit union sector as a whole. Gateway is the former CBOA Credit Union that has in recent years forged a new strategic direction largely divorced from its origins as a credit union serving the needs of Commonwealth Bank staff.Yellow Brick Road is the new business begun by Mark Bouris, the founder of Wizard Home Loans in the late 1990s. (This was later sold to GE Capital and more recently to Aussie Home Loans).Thomas said that Gateway only warmed up the alliance midway through the first half of this calendar year but that Yellow Brick Road now accounted for the majority of new home loan business for the credit union. He also stressed that Gateway was a conservative institution and would maintain this approach.Bouris, CEO of Yellow Brick Road, said the financial planning business was only just opening its 39th outlet this week, in Melbourne, up from only 10 or so last year.He also said that it now takes four to five months to train and qualify a new loan writer, taking into account the requirements of Gateway, the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia and also now ASIC.Bouris said YBR was now writing around $60 million in loans each month. Some of these are funded through other lenders.