Credit Union Management

The folks at the Center for Responsible Lending have been researching the subprime mortgage products that some lenders have been using to make a ton of money the past few years. The worst part about the subprime lending phenomenon is all the media focus has centered on the financial problems of the lenders who created the situation in the first place, with scant mention of the real people who face a crisis they may not even be aware of yet. Credit unions should start talking about this issue ...

Letters to the Editor

Management Network

Lights, Camera ... Have Fun

As a CEO, it is easy to tell the troops not to take the work-day world so seriously. It is another thing to don your pajamas to walk the talk. But that is what CPM Federal Credit Union CEO George Lockwood did recently. Appearing in his pajamas, Lockwood "starred" in a video, which aired at CPM FCU's Employee Day. In the video, Lockwood's character was a copy repairman who has a dream that he is CEO of the CU. The video, "The Twilight Zone: A New Dimension in Service," was actually a training ...

Focus On Microlending: Kiva Is People Helping People

Open Forum

Online Checking

General Management

A New Look at Segs

Many credit unions have moved away from the single-sponsor model. Maybe the sponsoring company shut down or was taken over by another company. Credit union membership used to be defined by very specific requirements; now, that is not always the case. The addition of one SEG has often led to the addition of another, then another, then another. Sometimes the SEG model has been abandoned altogether in favor of a community charter. Certainly SEGs have played a significant role in the legacy of ma...

Human Resources

Managing Many Schedules

An aging and increasingly diverse workforce has resulted in the need for organizations of all kinds to be more concerned than ever about helping employees manage work/life preferences. Couple this with the need for credit unions to expand hours of service to meet member needs and it is readily apparent that the days of the straight nine to five, Monday-Friday work-week are long gone. That creates significant challenges for staff and management, as all work to optimize their needs while, ultim...

Board

Choosing a Path

The key to strategic success is implementation, said Lou Centini, senior director of executive education at Darden Graduate School of Business, Charlottesville, VA, and a panelist at CUES' Directors Conference, Dec. 3-Dec 6 in Phoenix, AZ. Strategic success is 20% good strategy, he said, and 80% implementation. If you implement a mediocre strategy very well, you can still have great success. Before strategy there is a role that is even more important that the board plays and that is to hire t...

A Race Without a Finish Line

Forecasting scientific and technological breakthroughs is not an exact science and George Hofheimer, CAE, chief research officer for Filene Research Institute, Madison, WI, has "back issues" to confirm this. To separate hype from reality and fads from trends, Hofheimer recommends that boards be vigilant in trend watching, while tempered by skepticism. Doug True, president of FORUM Solutions, LLC, says the environment is ripe for credit unions to innovate more around the member experience. Dav...

Operations

When Locks Don't Work

Receiving fraud alerts from Visa is not unusual for CUES member Georgette Munoz, CEO of Hayward, CA-based Bay Cities Credit Union. Typically, the communiques (called CAMS alerts, as they come from the card giant's Compromised Account Management System) mention a handful of possibly compromised accounts. The solution was pretty simple: Munoz took the list of compromised accounts and divvied it up. They had her, the VP of marketing, the IS administrator, her counterpart, a computer operator and...

Marketing

Far From Ordinary

In reality, developing successful marketing strategies for credit union's (CU) credit union service organization (CUSO) can present additional challenges for a credit union. In many instances, the CUSO's services are more complex and more difficult to market to consumers than the CU's traditional products of checking accounts, loans and credit cards. Additionally, many CUSOs are relatively new to the marketplace, as compared to their CU counterparts, and still must work hard to establish mark...

Cues News

What's On Your Radar?

New Partnership Yields Reward Checking

Cues Introduces Cornerstone Report for Cus

From The Editor

Literacy Leaders

Editor Credit unions have truly embraced financial education, as evidenced by the wide variety of innovative programs the author has come across, just in the last week or so. Yet, financial education need not be fancy. It can be simple, like this program described by CUES member Gary P. Fishlock, president/CEO of $88 million STCU Credit Union, Springfield, MA: They have just rolled out a youth savings and loan program. For the first $500 of the share account they will guarantee a dividend rate of 6%...

P & S

Security Advice and Experience

Servistar Offers New Training Alternatives

Cu Membership Strategies

Cfo Focus

Purchasing Card

The Purchase One card offered through $25.6 billion WesCorp, San Dimas, CA, via the CUSO Procura LLC has helped Teachers Credit Union, South Bend, IN, add better monitoring and control to its purchases. The card has also been instrumental in structuring the vendor payment system at Mountain America Federal Credit Union, West Jordan, UT. Having a purchasing card program is nice for a lot of reasons, says Amy Sink, CFO for Teachers CU. But it was a lifesaver when it came to helping her fast-gro...

Hr In Brief

Employers Report Frequent First-Year Departures

Disabilities Initiative

Playing with 'Borrowed' Time?

"Where does the day go?" many workers lament, which might explain why those polled for a recent OfficeTeam survey said they spend an average of 36 minutes per day, or the equivalent of three hours a week, attending to personal tasks at the office. Women said they take an average of 29 minutes daily to attend to personal tasks during office hours. While men admitted to spending 44 minutes each day on non-work related activities.

General Mangement

Atm Economics

Introduced in the name of customer service and later touted as a money-maker, ATMs and their place in the service/revenue mix are in flux again. Members continue to demand convenient, free ATM access, especially now that they can just as easily grab an extra $40 in cash in the grocery checkout line. With the growth of debit purchases and cash-back debit transactions, it follows that fewer nonmembers will be willing to pay foreign transaction fees at credit union ATMs. It also follows that the...