ALBERTA, Canada-Now that the "Young & Free" program has a full year under its belt, Commonwealth CU here is ready to talk results.
The Young & Free program includes a package of free, unlimited financial services along with an online microsite that includes financial hints, polls, blogs and trivia.
The CU also employs a spokesperson to represent and be the voice of the 17- to 25-year-olds (see story, left). Each year a new spokesperson takes over the role, and travels around the province, attending and speaking at events, producing and posting audio and video podcasts, and writing regular blog entries on everything from finance to pop culture.
Since it's inception, 30% of new members were added to the total number of youth members at the 56,000-member credit union, said Kim Crockett, Young & Free manager.
"This translated into adding 1,000-plus new youth members to the 4,800 we had at program launch," she said.
Today there are 2,736 Young & Free account-holders with $3,924,220 on deposit with $1,608 as the average balance.
"These Young & Free members also have loans totaling $26,592,816 and investments totaling $1,409,003 with the credit union after just 12 months," Crockett said.
Since the launch, traffic to the Young & Free website has been 95,021 with 285,440 page views. It has 1,381 blog comments and 128,014 youtube videos. The Young & Free program has also received more than $425,000 in unpaid coverage to date, Crockett said. The initiative is marketed through the Young & Free website, and throughout the Internet on sides such as MSN, Flicker and YouTube.
