TAMPA — GTE Financial used technology to fuel its turnaround, centering those efforts around remote deposit capture and P2P payments.
Chad Burney, chief information officer and SVP of virtual banking, said that before Joe Brancucci took over as CEO three years ago, the institution was "pretty much a dying credit union; we were on NCUA's target list. Joe started implementing a strategy, and the credit union never really had a strategy before that."
The $1.6 billion CU rebranded as GTE Financial in 2012, a move that Burney called "the pinnacle" of the credit union's turnaround (
Fixing RDC
One of the first steps included fixing remote deposit capture, a channel that Burney said "still lacked the consistency we were trying to achieve with other channels." GTE worked with Fiserv's DNA platform to transition those deposits from batch processing to real-time.
"We knew for members to widely adopt it, it would have to be consistent with our ATM and teller platforms," said Burney. "The open architecture of the DNA platform allowed us to go out to one of the developers that develops for OSI/DNA product and say 'Here's our challenge — trying to create a real-time environment with RDC."
The CU also launched Fiserv's Popmoney service for P2P payments. While GTE does offer an internal service for transfers between GTE members, "in order to offer the whole suite of products to our members we had to offer some way for them to make a transfer from a member to a non-member," said Burney.
Popmoney allows users to make payments or transfer money by using either a cell phone number or e-mail account, similar to Paypal. GTE does not charge members to use the service, and Burney said that CEO Brancucci "is adamant that with the strategy we're creating, our members will come if we offer the products that they actually want to use."
The Turnaround
Those efforts, along with the re-branding, helped turn around the once-struggling credit union. Whereas three years ago GTE's membership was declining or, at best, staying static on a month-to-month basis, these days the credit union averages 2,000 new members per month. Included in that figure, he said, are 300-500 members who rejoin the CU each month.
"We believe they left us during the bad times, and they obviously left us for a reason," said Burney. "Being able to turn around an organization where a member leaves and then comes back, you know you're doing something good."
GTE had hoped to grow by 7% in 2013, and it surpassed that goal in August. The CU expects to finish the year at between 10-12% member growth. The expectation for 2014 is 7%, a figure that GTE has sustained for the past two years. The CU's Net Promoter Score has also risen from negative numbers three years ago to the low sixties today. "NPS is what drives this organization; we watch that monthly," said Burney.
Burney didn't shortchange the importance of shedding troubled loans and other aspects of the business side of running the credit union, but stressed that "at the end of the day, what has turned this credit union around is having a strategy in place and focusing on employees' and member experience."
Burney said he believes that the steps GTE has taken can be effective for any credit union. All it takes, he said, is a strategic focus built around serving the membership. But technology plays a major role, as well.
"Regarding RDC, it amazes me how some credit unions have not rolled out with this," he said. "If you're not in the virtual or mobile space yet, it's easy to implement, very low cost, and has such a huge impact on the member experience. I don't know if we've had one complaint about it."
