BankThink

Growth is fueled by the member experience. Research shows 10 tools can enhance that experience to build the highest loyalty and gain new members by referral.

Your disaster plan has no doubt gotten much more detailed and sophisticated in a post 9/11 and Katrina World. Those run-of-the-mill disasters, fires and floods and tornadoes? You're ready. The slightly more exotic but increasingly common internal threats? You've put new procedures in place and updated your insurance. And those supposedly once-a-century disasters and terrorist attacks? You aren't waiting 100 years to get your act together.

With financial service trends driving towards mobility and efficiency, we need to invest in and examine how we can extend our products and services through new e-channels and challenge ourselves on product differentiation.

In the June 30 edition of Credit Union Journal, Peter Duffy wrote an article titled, "Evolving Credit Unions Demand What Congress Intended: Option to Change Charters." This article could have been written by any of the leaders of the thrift charter conversion movement that has now almost come to a screeching halt because of the perils inherent in the process and the realization that the grass isn't necessarily as green as it might seem on the bank/thrift side of the fence.

I have, in just the past year alone, won the British National Lottery twice, inherited enormous sums of money from relatives at least two forests removed from my own family tree, and, like many of you, been the fortunate recipient of the generosity of an African prince/government official who just needs a small downpayment in order to share with me the millions of dollars/Euros that await me.

Given the stressed economic environment, the failure of some financial institutions and the troubled mortgage market, it is natural that policymakers are reassessing the nation's regulatory structure in an attempt to prevent future crises.

Editor's note: this letter is in response to previous letters to the editor about the size of CUNA CEO Dan Mica's salary and an NCUA proposal to make all credit union CEOs' salaries public record.

I understand if you have chosen to quit opening the newspaper. Overall net membership growth is declining. Net interest margins are not covering operating expenses. CEO and board leadership is in transition. The economy is bordering on recession. Interest rates are fluctuating daily. For many, the housing market has gone south. Fuel and food prices are rising faster than our raises and pundits are forecasting a gloomy picture for this election year into 2009.

OK, so apparently there is one more item you should add to the verboten list of things you shouldn’t bring up at dinner or among polite company. In addition to sex, politics and religion, add financial institution “examinations” and “examiners.”

In response to Frank Diekmann’s column in the July 21 issue, the new sheriff, Michael Fryzel, needs to clean up Dodge City and, as Mr. Diekmann implied, his own deputies. The NCUA became complacent and turned its focus away from safety and soundness to a myriad of other things, including The Office of Small Credit Union Initiatives, Access Across America and the Bank Secrecy Act. In the meantime the examination process failed to detect and prevent credit union failures, prompt corrective action failed and the problem resolution process turned problem credit unions into disasters.