NORCROSS, Ga.-These are boom times for Associated CU here. The entire month surrounding Bank Transfer Day saw a 50% increase in new share accounts over the previous year, and the credit union is getting 80% penetration on new checking accounts and debit cards.
"What we're seeing is that the people opening accounts now are getting more products per member than we've ever seen before," said CEO Lin Hodges. "They're coming in looking at us like, 'We know we want to do business with you. How many things should be we doing business with you on?' I know there's going to be an overflow on our loans."
Hodges spoke to Credit Union Journal just before Thanksgiving and noted that four of the past five weeks had been Associated Credit Union's biggest weeks for the entire year on consumer loans. "The whole movement away from banks and towards credit unions is happening not just on the deposit side, but we're feeling the effects on the loan side already," he said.
Associated-which merged with CSRA CU earlier this year ("Now A 'Division,' Number Improve," Aug. 22)-is doing double the mortgage business it was a year ago, said Hodges, "and a year ago was a very busy time." According to its September 2011 Call Report, Associated CU has more than 85,000 loans and leases on its books, totaling more than $439 million. Those numbers include 862 first mortgages valued at a combined $94.6 million.
The credit union serves more than 149,000 members with $1.2 billion in assets.
Hiring Again
On top of everything else, the credit union is hiring again for the first time in four years. "Up until this point, one of our big things has been efficiency," said Hodges. "We hadn't done layoffs, but through attrition we had allowed our numbers of personnel to go down." Including the merger, Associated has reduced its numbers by about 40 employees in the last four years, said Hodges. While the CU is "not even close" to hitting its staffing numbers from those days, it is on the hunt for service representatives, call center staff, tellers and branch personnel, and compliance officers.
"You always want to get really, really good people, and we're pretty picky," said Hodges. "Having said that, it's taken a little longer to find the quality of people that we want than I would have imagined."
