Julie Renderos has seen the impact of climate change up close.
Renderos, executive vice president and chief financial officer for
For the past five years, Renderos has been the $17.1 billion-asset credit union's incident management commander, a role in which she leads a cross-functional team in developing, maintaining and executing the business continuity plan.
"This resulted in successfully achieving safety and service before, during and immediately after an event including several hurricanes and a pandemic," she said. In the case of Idalia, the team chose to close eight branches near evacuation zones.
As part of American Banker's
"With each climate-related event, we learned from it, made adjustments and improved to be even better prepared for the next event," Renderos said.
Suncoast has also begun to encourage and incentivize its members to prepare for risks by offering rate premiums to encourage savings and discounting loans for members to invest in green products, electronic and hybrid vehicles, Renderos said.
The credit union's top driver for financing eco-friendly purchases is that going green is good for the environment, good for the soul and good for members' financial well-being, she said.
"Our goal is to build climate resilience within our community by helping to equalize access to human, social and financial capital. Living in one of the higher risk areas of the country, having a strong, reliable and robust business continuity plan is key," Renderos said.
What credit unions do not want is interference from the regulators on the issue.
But
"Most recently, we supported those who were affected by the
Bland said it is more important than ever to support organizations that help keep communities strong, and Golden 1 is committed to continuing its own investments in those groups.
"We often find that nowadays many of our members are more socially minded — whether it's being passionate about climate change, DEI or human rights. It's important for organizations to respect these types of passions and what their members or customers care about," Bland said.
Affinity Federal Credit Union in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, chose to develop a formal process or procedures for understanding who in its communities and in its field of membership was impacted by climate change, said Pamela Cohen, senior vice president of people, culture and administration.
Previously, the $4.4 billion-asset credit union would have different departments and teams call any members that it assumed had been impacted to do a basic check-in and let them know Affinity was there for them.
But due to the increase of natural disasters and Affinity's focus on its communities, it realized it had to change its approach.
Affinity now has a cross-functional team made up of employees from risk, marketing, public relations, compliance and business intelligence that come together to determine which of its members are impacted, what products and services those members hold with Affinity and what the potential impact to the member is, Cohen said.
"Once that is determined, we can then reach out to our members and communities with a more focused message about helping," Cohen said.
Credit unions are also focused on how their own operations affect the climate. For the $4.7 billion-asset Truliant Federal Credit Union in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, that meant placing more than 740 solar panels on the roof of the operations center it opened this year.
The building itself is a former Macy's store, and its large, flat roof was ideal for a solar installation, said Sherri Thomas, Truliant's chief administrative officer.
The solar panels will offset about 15% of the credit union's power consumption at the operations center for the next 25 years, she said. When
"We're often asked why we do these things," Thomas said. "Yes, we want to reduce our environmental impact and make a positive contribution to our local communities. But the biggest reason we do it is because it is the right thing to do."
