BATON ROUGE, La. - The decline in new car sales has some credit unions turning to independent auto dealers to drive up auto loan volume, but some are cautioning over the risk associated with some dealer’s sporadic regulatory compliance.

RALEIGH, N.C. - After Sandy Green began working at the $750-million Local Government Federal Credit Union as its volunteer development officer in November 2006–a then newly created position–volunteer numbers began to rise immediately.

MADISON, Wis. - Credit unions may be desperate to bolster sagging loan volume, but one expert warned against taking a “desperate times call for desperate measures” approach to lending.

Meetings

JANUARY 2008

Veridian Credit Union, Waterloo, Iowa, named Katie Spilker training specialist and Brittney Diercks operation supervisor.

ALBERTA, Canada - Seeking to better market to the 17-to 25-year-old market, Common Wealth Credit Union has named Larissa Walkiw, 19, from St. Albert, Alberta, as its first Young & Free spokesperson. Walkiw won the most votes in an online election. Below, Walkiw talks about her new role.

BEAUMONT, Texas - Education First CU promoted James Lackey, its EVP, to be its new CEO. Lackey will succeed Ron Jackson, who retired New Year’s Day after 31 years with the credit union, the last 27 as CEO. During his tenure, Jackson, 62, grew the credit union to more than $210 million and 29,000 members. Education First was chartered in 1952 as Teachers CU of Beaumont and changed its name in the 1990’s to Beaumont Area Educators FCU, then more recently to Education First to reflect a broader field of membership. (c) 2008 The Credit Union Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.cujournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com

The 2007 NCAA Division 1 Football National Champion will come from:

SUITLAND, Md. - Michael Hale, the long-time president of the $810-million Andrews FCU. No reason was given for the resignation. Former NCUA Board member Deborah Matz has been named interim CEO. Matz has served as AFCU’s CFO since April 2006. Hale has served as president of Andrews since 1996 and was CEO of Arizona FCU before that. He has served on the boards of the African American CU Coalition and other groups. (c) 2008 The Credit Union Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.cujournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com

MADISON, Wis. - Add credit union youth to those becoming ecologically sensitive. “Got Green? Grow It at Your Credit Union” was chosen as the theme for National Credit Union Youth Week, April 20-26. Youth Week will coincide with the annual April 22 Earth Day event, and participants will be encouraged to build good saving habits and change current habits to protect the environment.

North American Buildings In The News

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. - The credit union-sponsored Biz Kids$ TV series got a national audience in its initial airing yesterday, with 279 Public Broadcasting Stations in 43 states showing the new program teaching kids about business. That represents 81% of PBS stations. CUs are able to download and customize Biz Kid$ brochures, fliers, postcards, posters and statement stuffers at ncuf.coop. CUs have raised more than $5 million to sponsor the first 13 episodes and are seeking additional financial support for the remaining 13 episodes currently in production. The materials, developed by a partnership between America’s Credit Unions and Junior Achievement, can be used to teach financial literacy in the nation’s classrooms. The project was created and developed by the Washington CU Foundation, the Washington CU League and the National CU Foundation, with the financial assistance of hundreds of CUs. (c) 2008 The Credit Union Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.cujournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com

ELMONT, N.Y. - A local man was charged with using stolen identities and personal information of several individuals to obtain consumer loans of $86,000 from Bethpage FCU, Nassau Financial CU and Nassau Educators FCU.

Growing stress in the housing sector and more lenient underwriting standards have contributed to indirect auto loan delinquencies jumping to a 16-year high, according to the American Bankers Association (ABA).

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Below is a look at some of the year-end rebates and bonuses recently announced by credit unions:

WASHINGTON - CUNA has sent a letter to NCUA urging that examiners be well-versed in provisions of “workout arrangements” for subprime mortgage loans at credit unions and that they be given adequate training to recognize reasonable workout plans and adequacy of risk mitigation efforts on the loans.

WASHINGTON — CUNA said its political action committee raised almost $2 million last year, enabling it to set aside a little more than $700,000 for the critical second year of the two-year election cycle–a new high.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - At the beginning of the 2007 college football season, the CU Journal used its online poll to allow readers to predict from which conference the national champion would come. With LSU’s win, one-third of readers correctly guessed the Southeastern Conference. (c) 2008 The Credit Union Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.cujournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com

In our January 2008 issue of cent$, our American Airlines Federal Credit Union magazine, I took the opportunity to remind our members of some “hows” and “whys” we are different than other providers of financial services. For all business entities strategic “differentiations” are critical to long-term success and that is even more so the case for smaller niche players such as credit unions. In fact, Michael Porter, in the Harvard Business Review article referred to, sort of defines strategy as tightly linked-differences.