The California league's new Latino Network will hold its first webcast today to educate credit union leaders about the "multifaceted Latino market and how their credit union can extend its reach and expand its services to this rapidly growing population."
"Latinos represent 13.1% of the U.S. population and are the fastest growing ethnic group in the nation," said RaAnn Wood, league professional networks manager.
"According to a new study from the University of Georgia, Hispanic buying power has increased nearly 30% in just the last three years. As financial institutions dedicated to bettering people's lives, it's extremely important that credit unions in states that, like California, have a large Latino population understand how to serve this market."
Topics that the webcast will cover include segmenting the Hispanic and Latino communities- understanding the importance of differentiating sub-markets within these groups-and impediments and infrastructure challenges of expanding services to an identified Hispanic market.
The league said the webcast will also examine bank models, successful and not, to understand the challenges of successfully marketing to these communities, and share the latest opinions of the U.S. Treasury Department regarding use of the matricula consular as acceptable identification for opening credit union accounts.
The webcast from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. (PST) will be presented by David Grace, financial services and regulatory manager of the World Council of Credit Unions. Grace's responsibilities include the development of the International Remittance Network.
The event is open to members and non-members of the network. The audio portion of the program is delivered over a phone line, and the visuals are PowerPoint slides the participants view over the Internet from a computer in their offices.
