GLASTONBURY, Conn.-A high-tech society will fit right into CUs' sweet spot in 2109.
That's the prediction from Louis Hernandez, Jr., chairman and CEO of Open Solutions, who sees a bright future for credit unions. "The way humans interact will be different," Hernandez pointed out. "You may ask for a teller and a holographic image will appear. You may also get information through a heads-up display that you can access anytime."
Hernandez predicted the key to future CU success will lie in CU history. "The underlying strength of the credit union movement will be more powerful in 100 years. A lot of the advantages banks have today will have gone away due to commoditization, and the human interaction will become much more important."
Points of differentiation will be critical, according to Hernandez, who said CUs will stand out by focusing even more closely on affinity groups. The bigger credit unions may be "horizontal players," serving everyone. "But the smaller ones may likely serve specific affinity groups, such as African-Americans, Asians, or students," Hernandez said.
Marketing will become more streamlined and targeted.
"People will share genetic encoding and perhaps have things like portable implants-like what's now used to take paraplegics' thoughts and convert them to computer instructions. You will know so much more about your members and be able to distinguish with much greater accuracy what a member may do under certain circumstances."
