Call this Part 2 of our smarter lending for credit unions. The recent episode, #113, explored small business lending with Capiform’s Sherif Hassan. Listen here. This week it’s time for something entirely different.
Author: Talli McCracken
CU2.0 Podcast Episode 113 Sherif Hassan on The Opportunity in Small Business Lending
PPP loans just may have awakened credit unions to the immense opportunity there is in small business lending. That’s what Sherif Hassan, CEO of fintech Capiform, believes. The opportunity is there.
CU2.0 Podcast Episode 112 Steve Bruyn on the Huge Opportunity For Credit Unions to Win Bank Customers Today
You remember Bank Transfer day, that 2011 movement that brought in perhaps one million new credit union members, possibly more.
Something a lot bigger may be about to happen.
That’s the opinion of Steve Bruyn, CEO of Foresight Research who, writing in The Financial Brand, said that its extensive polling had found nearly a doubling of the number of consumers who say they intend to change financial institutions. Now 22% say they are heading to the exit of their present financial institution, per Foresight Research.
Foresight Research elaborated: “We have surveyed almost 11,000 banking customers and credit union members in 44 markets to find out what is really going on in the world of banking from the customer/member’s point of view. Then we added another survey of almost 700 customers and members to find out what the pandemic had changed in the banking industry. We found a hot spot of churn. Churn increased from 12% (over two years) to 22% expected churn in the next year or two.”
Hear the Bruyn podcast here.
The news gets sweeter still: “Of the people who intend to leave their financial institution almost 3 out of 4 are Gen Z or Millennials – the very block of business that drives the future of your financial institution,” said Foresight Research.
Foresight Research added: “So, what drove the high churn? Even though satisfaction declined greatly (except at credit unions) that was not the culprit. Customers and members were generally empathetic, likely thinking ‘we are all in this together’. It was all about financial issues like interest rates and fees. The switchers while forgiving also are looking to reduce cost or increase interest on items like money market accounts, CDs, etc.”
This makes sense. The economy is the worst it has been since the Great Depression. Millions of us are unemployed and millions more are underemployed (working fewer hours). It’s tough to balance the household budget when less money is coming in so a shrewd step is to slash unnecessary outgo.
Bank fees are prime to be trimmed. And that is a potential bonanza for credit unions.
Ask yourself this: where can credit unions beat banks, consistently? The answer is and has long been on pricing of everything, from account fees to NSF fees and loan interest rates. Credit unions are member owned, they have no shareholders who demand dividends. Most have unpaid boards of directors. Most pay their employees fairly but rarely lavishly – and here’s a CNN round up of bank c-suite compensation and note that the CEO of Bank of America had total compensation of $24.8 million but he was by no means the highest paid in the group.
Big salaries, big dividends to shareholders, and bloated, inefficient branch networks add up to huge expenses on the books and that means customers have to pay through the nose for the privilege of having a bank account.
Listen up here.
Listen Here
Want to listen to more of the Credit Union 2.0 podcast series? Click here to view the series.
Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email [email protected]
CU2.0 Podcast Episode 111 The Omnichannel Voyage, Part 2 with Mark Schuiling of Wildfire Credit Union
No more cookie cutter solutions. And put a branch in the member’s hands with mobile tools that allow the member to do pretty much anything he/she could do in a branch.
When Wildfire, a $900 million credit union in Saginaw Michigan, set out on its omnichannel journey four or five years ago it dreamed big, says Mark Schuiling, VP of technology.
A lot of the process was doing hard thinking about what the institution wanted to be and what it wanted to provide members. From the start, however, Wildfire knew its future would be digital and it also wanted to provide members with a unified consumer experience, not the fragmented experience many credit unions offer because they have pasted together solutions provided by third party vendors.
At $900 million, however, and with only three programmers, Wildfire also knew it had to carefully pick a vendor and a tool that would suit its budget and its internal skills.
About a year ago, the process turned serious and Wildfire went all in on its digital transformation, working with Backbase as its technology partner.
Listen up to the Backbase podcast, number 110 in this series.
This Wildfire podcast tells the story from the institution’s perspective and Wildfire candidly tells about its hopes, its challenge, and also why it now is going slow in the roll out of its omnichannel solutions to members (because it wants members to want the solution and to know they want it).
Listen up here.
Listen Here
Want to listen to more of the Credit Union 2.0 podcast series? Click here to view the series.
Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email [email protected]
CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 110 The Omnichannel Voyage, Part 1 with Vince Bezemer of Backbase
For how many years have you heard about omnichannel banking – and you also know not many institutions have done this more than pay lip service to an idea of the digital first financial institution.