CUNA Task Force To Tackle Growth Challenges

WASHINGTON - To combat the sluggish membership growth that has plagued credit unions for the last few years CUNA has created a Membership Growth Task Force to identify and address the underlying issues that have kept growth stagnant.

Texas CU League CEO Dick Ensweiler will chair the task force, with State Employees Credit Union of Maryland CEO Rodney Staatz serving as vice chair. The nine-member group will meet for the first time June 3.

"We are going to identify markets and look at best practices of those credit unions that have been growing well," Ensweiler told Credit Union Journal. "It's going to be an interesting challenge determining what is behind this trend and how to break it."

When asked why he thought credit unions have had such lackluster membership growth, Ensweiler said he really doesn't know. "Credit unions have bigger marketing departments now than ever before. Maybe they have transformed from single sponsor entities to community entities and not really made the full transition, yet. Maybe some have scooped up a bunch of low-income areas but are still working to really get the resources in there to penetrate those markets."

Or maybe it's one of the oldest business clichés in the book: what gets measured gets done. "Credit union boards and management pay attention to ROA, for example, because the federal government sends in examiners who judge them based on that," Ensweiler suggested. "But maybe there is no meaningful measurement on the membership growth side because regulators don't judge you on that."