Get ready. The year-end lists are coming. Top-grossing films. Richest people. Greatest inventions of 2013.
Credit unions will roll out their own intra-industry lists, too, and most are the usual list of ratios and metrics that are almost always dominated by the same couple of dozen, large-asset CUs. But there's at least one list in which asset size is not the opening ante.
One of the great pleasures of this job, besides all the hotel chicken, of course, is reading through all the nominations and then helping decide on Credit Union Journal's own list of Best Practices in Credit Unions, which you'll find featured in this issue. Usually, those chicken lunches are accompanied by a side dish of some conference speaker either calling for more innovation (while never offering tangible strategies for getting there) or lamenting a lack of innovation in CUs. It's a message that makes you wonder who is getting the worst end of the deal: folks in the audience, or the chicken.
A New Map
Looking for innovation? Consider Allegacy FCU in Winston-Salem, N.C., which wanted to redefine member service and in response launched a project it called "Mapping the Member Experience." It reviewed all of its delivery channels seeking to identify "what impressions are created along the way and where impressions may be enhanced."
We know (because CUs are always saying it) that members "love" their credit union, but Allegacy deserves props, by the way, for incorporating into its map "Member Complaints and Compliments." Too many CUs — and other organizations — view complaints as some sort of anomaly.
* Meanwhile, in Omaha, Neb., Centris FCU has engaged in a cause of interest to many but executed effectively by just a few: acquiring PFI members. It has reviewed and overhauled product lines, dumped barriers to capturing prospects on their first visit, and implemented a sales process to go alongside training. In the first four months of the strategy, it reported an increase of 72% in openings compared to the same period in 2012.
* In Tampa, GTE Financial has opted to not wait to "see what happens" in payments. Recognizing the competition it (and every other CU) is seeing in payments from providers such as Paypal, it has enhanced its own RDC and P2P channels with a specific eye on the next generation of members as part of a broader "virtualization strategy."
* From cutting edge payments to an old product foundation... Mid-Hudson Valley FCU in New York has responded to what it sees as a perception that the menu at a CU isn't as sophisticated as that of banks by creating a sub-brand called "Connect" that aims to organize all of its checking account features into five categories, allowing new members/current members to pick and choose. Has it connected? Apparently. Enrollment in numerous programs is up.
* How can you tell if you have a knock-out of an idea? Let's begin with an obvious indicator: it's called "KnockOut." Created by PSCU, it's billed as a "practice to harvest the collective energy, imagination and intelligence of its community of employees and member-owner CUs." Held over two days at its St. Petersburg, Fla., headquarters and in Phoenix, KnockOut challenges teams to start from scratch and create software solutions and business models for the "next big thing." This year more than 150 people participated.
* Mountain America CU in Utah has been recognized on numerous occasions for innovation in CU Journal's Best Practices Awards, and this year is no different, with two different programs being honored. Its "Workplace Branching Through SEGs" strategy and its implementation of "Sales Team Consultants" are both worthy of learning more about.
* If there were a CU 12-Step Program, it would be open only to those that admit they have a problem. Few leaders have the courage. But Numerica CU does. It recognized that its execution of projects was "substandard" and that most employees "had no voice." Addressing those challenges through improved project management is now paying dividends, especially in loan growth.
* Other Best Practices worthy of stealing, I'm sorry, cooperative emulation, include Credit Union ONE and its program to build political advocacy; Hope CU's roll-out of mobile solutions to provide access to financial products and services to underserved consumers in the Mid-South; Mid Hudson River Valley FCU's deployment of a marketing and biz development campaign specifically around indirect lending and auto dealers, and Security Service FCU's new CRM solution.
Wait. There's More!
And there's more. Associated CU has turned to video-conferencing to improve training across its branches; Diamond CU has successfully targeted first-time auto-buyers; CFE FCU has used balance transfers to boost card outstandings; Aspire FCU has successfully managed the tough job of branch consolidations, and Pioneer West Virginia FCU took its card program back in-house and "established one of the most rapidly growing portfolios in the nation."
Want to know more about these best practices? Coverage begins on page 12.
Frank J. Diekmann can be reached at
