PayThink

Heard the same troubling story, but different anecdotes, from two different people last week. First, Dick Ensweiler, president of the Texas league and chair of the new CUNA Member Growth Task Force, noted that in areas where there are multiple CU community charters, credit unions are spending time and money differentiating themselves from each other, rather than from banks. This only makes the creation of a CU brand, among other things, all the more difficult, he observed. A day later, I spoke with a vendor to credit unions in Southern California who told me that the company has long offered regional user's meetings, but it has begun hearing from CUs that want to go to other region's meetings in order to not have to share anything with credit unions in their area.

Peer comparison surveys from 1996 and 2006 show that credit unions have made significant strides in the last decade while still facing similar challenges and threats. The members' service quality experience has improved, as have efforts to create a sales culture. However, interest in additional loans has decreased, and convenience and savings rates continue to be an Achilles heel. Member Research has been surveying thousands of credit union members annually for 20 years. This article shows some of the changes our statistics show over the last decade in a few key areas of member perception.

Editor's Note: the following is from a comment letter on NCUA's FOM and Chartering Manual from Charles Agricola, a former NCUA employee.

Consumers Deserve Financial Svc.

A graduate student decides to open a share account at the campus credit union. He heads over to the CU, applies for membership, and deposits $100. He walks out the door. Our college student is completely satisfied.

Editor's note: the following are excerpts from Vancouver, Wash.-based iQ CU CEO Roger Michaelis' comment letter to NCUA on the disclosure of merger-related compensation arrangements.

If nothing else, a few weeks on the road have taught me this lesson: Las Vegas leads the nation in people wearing sunglasses at times when both the location (inside) and time (night) would not seem to require shades. And in other news...

The recent firing of CBS Radio "shock jock" Don Imus strikes to the heart of how bad behavior adversely affects business. As Tom Brokaw noted in the New York Times: "There has been an absence of civility in public discourse for some time now. The use of language across the racial spectrum, and across the political spectrum, and across the cultural spectrum, has been, in any way you want to describe it, debased to a certain degree." Can this "discourse," to which Mr. Brokaw refers, ever be good for business?

If it weren't for the great admiration of marketers, CEOs would probably ease their stress level and amount of medication just to simply say, "Do as I ask, and don't think."

It didn't take me hundreds of management meetings to learn that I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than have another conversation about who isn't cleaning up after themselves in the lunchroom. It is one thing that I know my CEO and I have in common. However, aside from our loathing of the lack of office etiquette and our love of the credit union, we speak very different languages. It has taken years to discover how differently we work and view the world.