MADISON, Wis.-It's a long way from sunny Florida to wintry Wisconsin, but the route Chuck Fagan, CUES' new CEO, took wasn't so very big of a leap.
Fagan comes to CUES after working at PSCU Financial Services, one of the largest CUSOs in the nation. Prior to that he did an eight-month stint at EDS. But his roots in the credit union community are deep.
"My first job out of college was at Virginia CU in Richmond. I was there for 10 years, and I lead the payments group," he told Credit Union Journal. "I was actually a client of PSCU's before I worked there."
That breadth of experience, from working at a credit union to working for a vendor to working for a CUSO will stand him in good stead at the helm of CUES.
"PSCU is a much larger organization [than CUES], obviously, but what's much larger at CUES is the number of credit unions it touches. It's a much broader touchpoint. It's pretty overwhelming."
But even more disconcerting is the competition. "At PSCU, you had a number of natural competitors, Fiserv, CO-OP, et cetera," Fagan related. "But at CUES, sometimes our competition is the credit unions themselves. It's not always easy to get someone to allow an outsider in to help develop future leaders. As credit unions look to develop those leaders, there needs to be a willingness to outsource certain areas of the business. HR and training is one area they can outsource, and we can help them with that."
What helps with that, he said, is the fact that CUES is viewed as a leader and a respected part of the credit union community. "I'm taking the reins to an organization that was already very well-run and very well thought of," he noted.
But that doesn't mean Fagan can just sit back and rest on former CUES CEO Fred Johnson's laurels.
"CUES will need to have a willingness to customize a little bit more," he said. "Instead of just pulling a solution down from the shelves, we have to have the ability to tailor and adapt our offerings to what a specific credit union needs."
Getting In Tune
And just like credit unions themselves, CUES needs to be able to adapt quickly to an increasingly electronic world. "We need to be in tune with the expectations around online learning," Fagan observed. "We have some truly excellent conferences, such as the CEO Institutes, but more and more, going to physical, face-to-face meetings is an area that gets cut. We need to develop more online learning opportunities."
Something else CUES shares in common with credit unions: the need to develop a sales culture.
"CUES has relied on word of mouth, and because of the organization's reputation, that used to be enough, but now there is a need for CUES to be more proactive about selling itself," he offered. "This is going to be increasingly true as we have more CEOs and other executives come from outside the credit union industry."
Among the other goals Fagan has for CUES is to spark new revenue growth after a few stagnant years, invest in new programs and, fittingly for an organization designed to help credit union executives to develop professionally, to give staff more opportunities to develop their careers.
The biggest personal challenge for Fagan-beyond getting used to shoveling snow after more than a decade of living Florida-is the learning curve, he said. "After 10 years in payments at VCU, then 16 years at PSCU in the same thing, I have a lot to learn," Fagan noted. "In the beginning I'm really trying to stay out of the way as I ramp up my expertise to see credit unions from a broader perspective beyond payments."
