NORTH CANTON, Ohio-At times it seems many credit unions can't wait to push their older members out the door, but one company is cautioning that's a mistake.
Bank Transfer Day brought numerous CUs new members, many in the desirable Gen Y demographic. But Jerry Verdi, VP of market intelligence at Diebold, noted that CUs "can't lose sight of the value of middle-age and pre-retirement customers that are the bread and butter of their member base."
Those older members, he said, are not only lucrative members, but they're far more tech-savvy than they get credit for being.
"We have to get away from the stereotypes here," said Verdi. "The purchases and use of iPads-and the middle-age men who say they would love to do more of their financial transactions on an iPad-is stunning."
Verdi said that one of the side-effects of the recession has been that many consumers-especially Baby Boomers-realized they didn't know as much as they thought they did about the inner workings of finance, and "that self-recognized ignorance drove them to research a lot more." Much of that research was done via desktop computers and mobile devices.
Verdi noted that mobile-banking capability is often just as important to 65-year-old consumers as it is to 25-year-olds, and that those numbers grow each year.
"Very often, a 50-year-old customer will look just like a 24-year-old when it comes to channel use, and I think part of that is because credit unions have done such a great job through the years of introducing self-service options" and not going overboard with brick-and-mortar facilities.
He added that while Baby Boomers and Gen X members don't currently use electronic channels to the extent that their younger counterparts do, "as time goes on and they get more confident ... they will diminish face-to-face contact" and rely more on mobile offerings.
