In 2017, Bridgewater Credit Union of Bridgewater, Mass. sought a way to increase its core deposits and to attract more members who would view the CU their primary financial institution.
The $380 million-asset CU recognized that the household transaction accounts were key to this strategy and began to look at increasing the acquisition of checking customers. The result earned Bridgewater a Best Practices Award from Credit Union Journal in the growth strategies category.
Bridgewater CU
To help achieve its goals, Bridgewater utilized the “High Performance Growth Strategy” from Haberfeld, a financial institution consulting firm based in Lincoln. Neb. That marketing strategy involved Bridgewater reviewing internal policies in order to remove potential barriers to capturing prospective members on their first visit to the credit union. Their next step was to design a sales process that allowed front‐line staff to quickly identify and suggest the right account for the prospective member.
Robert Cabral, VP of retail administration at Bridgewater, noted that the entire process hinged on the credit union’s ability to focus on members’ needs.
“We focused on product design and internal procedures,” he said. ”We had representatives from all departments involved in the redesign of our checking account products, including our front-line team. Each discussion tried to address the question ‘What do members want?’ and from those answers we ended up with four highly successful products – new checking accounts on the retail side – that we now offer.”
During these same sessions, Cabral added, included a “candid look” at Bridgewater’s internal procedures.
“After some discussion we restructured and/or eliminated some procedures which may have been a hurdle in our teams’ ability to say ‘Welcome to the credit union, thank you for choosing us.’”
For example, such hurdles included a requirement that both people be at the branch if a joint account was opened. “We now open the account individually and then will add the second person when they are available to come in,” explained Theresa Hayes, director of marketing and online channels at Bridgewater.
Another such hurdle was requiring that the address on a valid ID match a prospective member’s home address.
For example, Hayes noted, if someone has moved, the address on their drivers’ license “may not match what they are telling us their home address is.” Thus, instead of requiring additional proof of their home address (for example, a utility bill) be presented, Bridgewater will open the account for them.
Finally, the credit union’s staff was trained on the new products, policies and processes immediately before the marketing period launched.
The marketing program, which commenced in July 2017, consisted of “highly targeted strategic outreach” to prospective new PFI members. Haberfeld mined Bridgewater’s member data and added big data components to find the most likely new PFI members, then reached out to them through direct mail and digital ads. Bridgewater also did this through its website and in‐branch marketing, as well as a digital and in‐branch referral strategy.
Hayes also said, “we were able to “identify new PFI members” by looking at the characteristics of our current PFI members and targeting individuals who are similar.” That included identifying and targeting neighborhoods, workplace commutes and more.
Results
From July 31, 2017 through August 31, 2018 (the most recent date for which data is available), the credit union saw a 54 percent increase in account openings compared to the same period of the prior year. These new accounts have contributed to $3.8 million in checking deposits, plus an additional $3.5 million in expanded deposit relationships, such as savings accounts and certificates of deposit.
Bridgewater also averaged seven new retail checking account openings per branch per week during the aforementioned period, almost double the four accounts they averaged per branch in the same period for the prior year.
On the whole, the credit union’s retail checking portfolio grew by 4.0 percent from July 31, 2017 through August 31, 2018; while new business member accounts increased by 5.4 percent over that period.
Moreover, the credit union’s retail checking deposits grew by 9.9 percent from July 31, 2017, through August 31, 2018.
Finally, the credit union has seen its overall membership rise to 31,841 as of September 2017 from 31,301 in September 2017.
PFI households (each of which may include one or more members) for Bridgewater totaled 10,199 as of August 31, 2018, up from 9,806 as of July 31, 2017. Based on in-house financial projections, Bridgewater also estimated that the average life of the new PFI members that it has added will be nearly ten years.
“Bridgewater Credit Union has embraced a culture of identifying the needs of both new and existing members, and that has translated into tremendous results as they continue to see a surge in new memberships and core deposits,” said Preston Afrank, account executive at Haberfeld. “Their strong leadership team has done a fantastic job motivating and engaging their employees.”
