LOMBARD, Ill.-Noting it's difficult to predict what CUs may look like even 10 years from today due to advancing technology, Bill Handel stepped into his time machine and said when he walked out 100 years later, he didn't see any credit union branches.
The VP of research and development at Raddon Financial Group said conducting transactions at branches will be replaced by mobile and home-based technology. "Right now I don't believe anyone thinks beyond the idea that we get in our cars and drive 10 minutes or an hour to work," Handel observed. "Chances are that in 100 years that model-and branches-will not be around. If you look at the importance of branches even 10 years ago, they were the place where most transactions were being performed, and that's already changing dramatically."
With a much greater ability to work and conduct financial business from home, credit unions whose field of membership are based on a geographic or physical area will fade away. "A credit union community will be defined in some other fashion," Handel said. "People who have many similarities or commonalities in terms of what they need will band together because technology will allow us to work together very seamlessly and easily. And we may not even be called a credit union."
But the credit union concept will remain and become an even stronger financial option.
"The banks' job is to arbitrage and then to generate a lot of income off that arbitrage, as opposed to something where a group of people get together and there is a management structure that facilitates a lending back and forth-and paying-to each other. That essential model that relates back to community will continue to be very successful."
