ATLANTA-Coming off of Delta Community CU's best year ever-including $42 million in earnings and 13% loan growth-new CEO Hank Halter has his sights set on a new target: the Gen Y and Millennial market.
Halter-who started 2013 as interim CEO and was recently installed in that position permanently-comes to $4.3-billion CU after serving as CFO of Delta Air Lines. He also served on the board of DCCU from 2006 to 2013. While the airline and credit union are dramatically different organizations, "the greatest similarity is that I'm coming from an airline that's probably best known for its service culture," said Halter. "At Delta Community Credit Union, we're very much all about service for our members. There's a very strong similarity between the two cultures, and that made the transition an easy one."
The first-time CEO now hopes to expose more young members to that culture, and Delta Community has recently launched QuarterLife, a new program aimed at boosting Millenials' participation with the credit union.
"The QuarterLife stage is that first car loan, first credit card-these are things that consumers in that age bracket will come to use every day," said Halter.
The 18-35-year-old age bracket is the holy grail for CUs, where the average member age perennially hovers around the late forties. But Halter believes that because Delta Community already has such a strong membership base, including families with children and young adults in that age bracket, it may be in a better position than some other CUs to capitalize on that market.
Halter also plans to put a greater focus on lending technology in the coming months-including tools to evaluate loan opportunities for members and speeding up the application process for members-which should appeal to the younger market, which increasingly wants more services delivered electronically.
The Heavy Lifting
Employee recognition is one of Halter's big pet projects, and he stressed the importance of investing in employees, which he called the CU's greatest asset. That means investing in training for new skills while also doing refresher courses, as well as investing in competitive wages and benefits. He added that he especially believes in investing in frontline, member-facing employees, because they interact the most with the membership and need to be able to nimbly respond when it's time to recognize member needs.
"The heavy lifting is not done by the CEO," said Halter. "It's done by the employees that serve our members. It's those individuals that are listening to our members through interactions, and we can learn a tremendous amount from them."
