The Credit Union 2.0 blog gives you all the tools you need to see the forest for the trees.
Welcome to episode 45 of the CU 2.0 Podcast. In this podcast, you will hear his recipe for credit union success.
Call this the credit union oral history sequence – Blaine, Bucky Sebastian, now Gary Oakland who took over BECU,
with around $700 million in assets, in the mid-1980s and when he left in 2012 it had become a $10 billion+ credit union, one of the nation’s very biggest.
Continue reading “Credit Union 2.0 Podcast 45: Gary Oakland BECU”
Credit unions targeting growth must balance member acquisition and attraction. Credit union marketing strategies work best when they operate on this principle. (In the long run, at least.)
Too many credit unions focus on member acquisition at the expense of attrition. Once they find a new member, they stop thinking about that member as a new lead. They miss opportunities to drive deeper engagement in new and existing members. There should be a seamless transition from acquisition-oriented marketing to upselling and cross-selling account types, credit cards, and other products and services.
Instead, those new members receive the same marketing treatment as members who’ve been around for years. The new member may want a credit card or help with retirement planning. Yet, if they’re not introduced to these services, they may not find them—or they might find a competitor’s offerings. That means they’ve already got one foot out the door…
Continue reading “Should Credit Unions Focus on Member Acquisition or Attrition?”
Eight times so far this year a credit union has bought a bank, according to Credit Union Times’ count. Some deals are small – Verve, for instance, paid $43 million to buy South Central Bank in Chicago.
Some are bigger such as Arizona Federal Credit Union’s buy of Pinnacle Bank in Scottsdale with its $236 million in assets. No details on the purchase price have been released.
In Florida – where the recent credit union buying a bank trend kicked off in 2015 when Achieva Credit Union bought Calusa Bank for $23.2 million — there have been three buyouts of banks by credit unions so far this year.
In the Chicago area, there also have been three purchases of banks by credit union so far this year.
This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. The first deal dates to July 2011 when United FCU bought Griffith Savings Bank in Indiana.
Continue reading “Credit Unions Buying Banks: Good, Bad, or Plain Ugly?”
You may remember the Equifax security breach in 2017. If you don’t, here’s a refresher:
In late 2017, Equifax announces a cybersecurity breach that jeopardized the personally identifiable information of nearly 150 million people. Names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and identification were all compromised.
This week in July 2019, Equifax settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to resolve several investigations and a consumer class-action lawsuit. That settlement of $575–700 million contains a hefty consumer restitution fund to repay those affected by the breach.
This is to say that if your identity was compromised in the Equifax security breach, you’re entitled free credit monitoring or $125.
Continue reading “Updates in the Equifax Security Breach Settlement”
Welcome to episode 44 of the CU 2.0 Podcast. In this podcast, you’ll hear what killed off savings and loans and why credit unions escaped their fate, why community banks may be next to expire (and what may keep them alive), and the big advantage credit union CEOs have over their peers at banks.
A state regulator in Illinois. General counsel at NCUA. A co-founder of Callahan Associates. Longtime CEO at GTE Financial. Head of the National Credit Union Foundation. Guess who.
Meet Wendell Sebastian, call him Bucky.
Continue reading “Credit Union 2.0 Podcast 44: Wendell “Bucky” Sebastian – a Credit Union Life”