Dream Weaver: To Help Members, CU First Helps Employees

MADISON, Wis.-To help members achieve their financial dreams, Summit Credit Union here is first helping employees achieve theirs.

To that end the $1.4-billion credit union instituted a program in late 2008 to help employees identify their goals in life and begin building a plan to reach them. Called "Dream Manager," CEO Andy Faust plays a key role, sitting down one-to-one with each employee who participates in the optional program, to begin the planning process.

"I conduct the sessions with employees because we want to learn lessons about how this could work on a broader scale, and having one facilitator with consistent practices has helped us do that," Faust explained. "Just as we want to be more than a place to cash a check for our members, we want our employees to value Summit beyond the paycheck it provides."

When employees are happy and understand what it takes to uncover and achieve a dream, which almost always includes a financial component, they are much better at helping members, explained COO Nancy Kalsow.

"Two years ago we came to the conclusion that the best way to help members reach their financial goals was to first help our employees reach their dreams. When employees are satisfied in their lives, that caries over to how they interact with members," Kalsow said.

The internal program has produced results with members. Of Summit's 106,000 members, Kalsow said that at any given time Summit has about 1,500 active member financial plans in process.

Many of the plans work to increase savings or reduce debt, and often result in debt consolidation loans with Summit. Kalsow shared that, according to a member survey, what's driving up Summit's Net Promoter Score (45.9%) is that members believe Summit offers good financial advice and that employees have a genuine interest in their financial wellbeing.

"We believe this will have a very positive effect on our Net Promoter Score long-term," Kalsow said.

Summit also added front-line training to help employees ask the right questions to uncover members' needs and suggest building a financial plan. Kalsow said the CU did not put a price tag on the costs for the Dream Manager program, "because it is an intrinsic part of our business and we did not see a need to track those costs."

Summit also ran two other member-facing programs last year to drive engagement. Pay it Forward (Credit Union Journal, Oct. 12, 2009), randomly handed out $10 bills to members at each of its 20 locations asking them to in turn do something good for someone else. Project Money, a competition among four local families enrolled in the CU's financial counseling program, sought to see which could do the best in reaching their dreams. Summit handed out a total of $17,500 in prizes with that effort.