Credit Union Management

The Art of Listening

Most ways of listening are fundamentally adversarial in nature. Most conversations resemble two television sets tuned to different channels broadcasting at each other. Each person's primary concern is his or her own desire to make sure the other person hears what he or she has to say. This is the root cause of most miscommunication between people. Becoming aware of how you listen means becoming conscious of where you have your attention and where your internal dialogue is going.

Comprehending Spending

Opportunities Credit Union (OCU) is helping members help each other in economic tough times with a mutual support group that promotes good financial habits. Budget Buddies meets monthly to provide motivation, mutual support and encouragement for members to stay on budget and change poor spending habits. Budgeting seminars are usually a one-time deal and a lot of members want to keep on track with more than a one-time deal, says OCU money-sense financial educator Jane King. The meetings includ...

Cues Evote: It's That Easy

Best-Selling Author to Close Cues' Directors Conference

Calendar

Cues Skybox

In Florida, Nevada, California and other states, financial services see credit unions (CUs) hurting. Many need to downsize assets to stay between 6% and 7% net worth. They are one, and are selling loans to a CU in a state that hasn't been affected and is well-capitalized. The CU System is not acknowledging the economic crisis as a disaster. Natural disasters and terrorist attacks bring out the best in the "people helping people" mission. There have been dissolutions of CUs, and dismissals of ...

Management Network

Turning Turnover On Its Head

In an effort to quell a costly 40% turnover rate among tellers, $38 million TMH Federal Credit Union (TMHFCU), with 6,000 members, instituted a hefty teller retention bonus, with great results. TMH FCU spends about $12,000 per year on retention bonus payments, but says it is money well spent, because the cost of hiring a new teller easily exceeds the $1,500 per teller annual bonus. The bottom line: Keeping people on the front line can help CUs develop lasting relationships with members.

Makeover: Cu Edition

When Extreme Makeover: Home Edition came to Toledo, OH, $528 million Directions Credit Union, with 74,000 members, hit a grand slam by helping one family pay off its debt and getting marketing exposure for the CU's new branding effort. The goal of the project was to raise money to help pay off the 13-person family's mortgage and other existing debts. The Extreme Makeover project is a prime opportunity for Directions CU to get its name out. Recently the CU rebranded after a merger of Toledo Ar...

Open Forum

Hello and Goodbye

Several executives shared their views on whether a credit union should offer a recently retired CEO a seat on your board of directors. Jeffrey Noe, president/CEO of Priority Community Credit Union, doesn't think that the current or former CEO should be on the board. Neither the current nor the former CEO can be independent enough. Stewart Ramsey, president/CEO of Fort Campbell Federal Credit Union, is against the idea for similar reasons. Although no such limitations are in place at Greater W...

General Management

A Worthy Companion

The 457(b) deferred-compensation plan suffers from brand confusion among credit union boards and executives. The 457(b) plan used by credit unions to help recruit, reward and retain top executives is very different from the 457(b) plan used for government employees. If your credit union doesn't have a 457(b) option available for top executives, it's worth reviewing what a 457(b) is, what it isn't, and what to look for in such a plan. Look for a provider experienced with 457(b) plan documents ...

Going the Distance

While some Olympians are known for their bold bursts of speed, credit union that go for the gold in the commercial deposit services arena are likely to be those that start slow and then grow at a steady pace. Mountain America CU has offered depository services since mid-2002. Like many credit unions, its primary strategy has been to mine its general membership base for business accounts. Smaller credit unions also can successfully offer commercial deposit services, asserts CUES member William...

Not Measuring Up. . .

A number of authorities believe the ratio of net income to total assets is not nearly as crucial an indication of a credit union's health in 2008 as it has been in the past. According to statistics from the National Credit Union Administration, ROA rates at credit unions have been steadily declining. The only way to build capital is through retained earnings, which is represented by ROA. So, the 1% ROA was incorporated into the regulatory expectation game in the late 1970s/early 1980s. CUES m...

Human Resources

Got Wired Employees?

Lauren Davison, SPHR, VP/member service at Coors Credit Union, with about 39 full-time equivalents, believes the lines between their work lives and their personal lives are blurring. Today's employees -- credit union or not -- are bringing into and accessing from the workplace technologies their predecessors only could have dreamed about, including blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter -- not to mention text-messaging and Web-browsing cell phones. The worry that wired employees will ...

Motivate or Alienate?

Unless you have the magical motivational spell of a Napoleon Bonaparte, Knute Rockne or Zig Ziglar, you probably need a solid and ever-evolving employee recognition plan to consistently bring out the best in your workforce. The challenge can be finding the right balance between rewarding your top employees without sending the wrong message to the rest of your staff. It would be great if all credit unions were staffed by a workforce composed of people who excel because they love their jobs and...

Board

In Tandem

Credit unions exist primarily to serve their members. It is their mission to represent them, help them grow, and provide them with products and services. But members' needs have grown increasingly complex over the past century. CUSOs are a collaborative, credit-union-owned solution for complex problems. CUSOs are well known for their assistance in back-office matters, such as collections, compliance, human resources and accounting. CUSOs represent a unique opportunity to make the credit union...

Hit the Ground Walking

Companies spend a lot of time and resources on the hiring and promoting process and because of that thorough vetting process, they expect the people they hire or promote to hit the ground running. Given the helter-skelter environments many newly hired or promoted executives are "airdropped into," as Karen Benjack Glatzer puts it, it's no wonder statistics suggest more than 70% of them don't stick around long enough to celebrate their second anniversary. Deedee Myers, founder and CEO of DDJ My...

Operations

Money Machine

In the current economy, Terence Roche, a principal with management consulting firm Cornerstone Advisors, sees the need for credit unions to shift branch strategies from growth to profitability. Market conditions can highlight the need to make adjustments in branching strategies. Wescom Credit Union (CU) had expanded to a total of 55 branches, through a combination of organic growth and mergers/acquisitions. In September, Wescom CU closed 11 of its branches as a means of increasing its operati...

Best Practices

You've Got Mobile!

It's a rare credit union that's not at least thinking about the implications of mobile banking. Non-bank players such as Geezeo and Obopay have beaten financial institutions to the punch when it comes to actually implementing mobile banking features. In their online forms, these non-bank services are using CUs' online offerings to retrieve account balance and transaction information and then are combining it with such features as personal financial management. Consistent with metrics surround...

Marketing

Look Back and Learn

Credit union marketers are some of the busiest people around. It takes a lot of lead time to get a campaign up and running; there is excitement as it unfolds and, likely, before it is finished, it is time to start the next project. So, gathering data and feedback for a post-mortem can be a letdown. Here are some tips for making the most of your post-mortem efforts: 1. Set your goals up front. 2. Know your baseline. 3. Know how to collect your data. 4. Get other metrics, but know how to use th...

Bridging the Gap

The evolution of mobile technology and the emergence of a new communications culture, particularly among young people, has credit unions (CUs) scrambling to keep their Web site "relevant" and to attract the iPhone and Blackberry crowd. The goal, and it's becoming a common one, is to find a way for a CU to connect with Gen Y. The idea was not just to create a hip CU blog or even to create a hip persona to pose as the blogger, but to stage an online contest to get Gen Yers involved in picking t...

Cues News

Cu Consolidation, Cooperation to Continue

Credit union competitive pressures will increase, traditional regulatory and tax protections for credit unions will remain the same and there's no end in sight for consumers' desire for electronic convenience, are the results of the semi-annual survey that monitors the future of the credit union industry, conducted by CUES and Strategic Radar Inc. The implication of the shift to the use of electronic channels is the importance of the strategic role of back-office technology for operations, ma...

From The Editor

After the Crash

Editor

P &Amp; S

Conversing On the Web

The transformation of the Web into a two-way conversation is arguably as cooperative as the credit union movement itself. With the increase in available media avenues and the simultaneous rise of marketing blockers like digital video recorders and "Do Not Call" lists, traditional mass marketing costs more and reaches fewer of the masses. It's important to note that traditional marketing isn't dead; it simply must co-exist with the word of mouth occurring in real time online. This new word of ...