PHOENIX-At the recent CUNA CFO Council Conference here, Credit Union Journal asked: "What changes has your CU made in the past year in response to regulations, the economy or both?"
Doug Hershman, CFO
Mountain Heritage FCU, Parkersburg, W. Va.
About one year ago we shut down two branches. They were non-performing and one had been robbed three times.
In one case we shifted the business from a location where we were paying high rent to a nearby branch that was rent-free on government property that was underused. We did not see a great loss of membership from either closure.
Sarah Tomei, Controller
CFCU Community CU, Ithaca, N.Y.
We are looking at our ALLL allowance at a more granular level with our introduction of risk-based pricing. We are expanding our pools to include rated loans. We are rating based on a variety of factors. By looking at historical losses for different ratings we can improve our estimates.
We are running the new way of calculating our allowance, and at the same we are doing it the old way. We have only been doing this for three months, but eventually we will see how far off the two methods are, and which one is more accurate.
Julie Raines, Controller
Trust FCU, Chattanooga, Tenn.
The biggest thing is we are doing is analysis to generate non-interest income or reduce expenses. We added opt-in for debit overdraft. Another initiative is we have been switching people from paper statements to e-statements, which has saved us a lot of money.
Shared branching has generated a good amount of income for us by servicing members of other credit unions. We are both an issuer and an acquirer, but we are the biggest center within 100 miles, so we net more than we pay out.
Ryan Drake, CFO
Our Community CU, Shelton, Wash.
Modeling has become really important, along with management of interest-rate risk and liquidity risk.
The combination of really knowing the balance sheet and keeping costs down is important. We are above our peers in cost of funds, and we have kept people costs down through the use of technology.
Brian Hughes, VP of Finance, Wealth & Business
Sun FCU, Maumee, Ohio
We have always gone longer on investments, deliberately taking on a bigger interest-rate risk. A year ago, regulators gave us 25 findings. We realized we had to put together a financial management handbook that included risk. We validated our process and showed the manual to NCUA with a PowerPoint presentation.
Their conclusion was while Sun Federal takes interest-rate risk, it actively manages the risk and poses a minimal risk to the insurance fund.
