MADISON, Wis.-An idea that helps homeownes anticipate when big ticket items might need replacing, and then to plan for that, has been identified as the most innovative of 2011.
Called HomeTrak, it was proposed by Lisa Palma, COO at Blackhawk Community CU in Janesville, Wis. Palma, a member of the Filene Research Institute's i3 Group, won a recent "Idea Idol" competition sponsored by Filene with her proposal.
"It's one thing to be able to pay for a mortgage; it's another thing to pay for all the things that make the house tick, like the furnace, the refrigerator or the dishwasher," said Matt Davis, Filene's director of innovation. "All of these things can be major expenses if they end up breaking. What HomeTrak does is it uses Consumer Reports information and other data to help consumers predict when a large ticket item might go bad and help them budget for those cases."
Davis said that the idea not only benefits consumers, but it challenges credit unions to find new ways to work with members and to re-think "the way we approve people for loans. Do we help people with home equity loans to cover some of these things? The possibilities on the consumer side and the credit union side are quite high."
HomeTrak will now go to Filene's Innovation Lab, where it will be assigned a project manager and receive funding in order to attempt to implement it at as many CUs as possible. Davis said it was too soon to know how much money will be needed or how many CUs would take part, but said that "we want as many credit unions to implement it as possible, with the mindset that we need to be able to manage those implementations as well."
Seventy Ideas Proposed
HomeTrak was one of more than 70 potential projects in the i3 hopper, and Davis explained that "Idea Idol"-which allowed CUs to vote on which of four ideas was the best-was a way to break a four-way tie as to which project to pursue next. More than 110 people registered for the web session and voted on the projects after each creator made a three-minute presentation.
The other three projects were:
Flex.One, which combines a first mortgage and home equity loan with the capabilities of a checking account.
Heartfelt Hands, which makes use of the "Angel Tree" concept as a way to recognize emergency financial needs and then connect them to members who want to help.
The Signal, a website for consumers to get answers to questions about asset building and disability benefits.
In comparing these projects to "American Idol," Davis pointed out that some of the biggest stars to emerge from the show-such as Clay Aiken and Adam Lambert-were not winners, but runners-up. Similarly, said Davis, just because a project didn't win "Idea Idol" doesn't mean that it doesn't have a bright future ahead. "Our urging to credit unions is to not give up on those ideas that didn't win."
Davis said that the runners-up from "Idea Idol" will remain in the hopper with other i3 initiatives with the possibility of further development later on.
"These ideas don't die," he said. "We're continually trying to make them better and ... we might have some of these second- and third-place ideas that end up being the eventual big hit."
