SEATTTLE—From measuring the impact new members have on the CU’s bottom line to a new concept that lets credit unions with limited resources offer more products through collaboration, the Filene Research Institute outlined some of the “hottest” ideas in its pipeline.
Filene’s Andrew Downin, speaking at CUNA’s America’s Credit Union Conference, detailed the projects that Filene’s i3 teams have developed and which have been identified as the most promising—ideas that range from those beyond the pilot stage to concepts just being developed.
Emphasizing the importance of CUs continuing and even improving on their record membership growth in recent years, Downin, who is Filene’s innovation director, stressed the need to measure the results of that growth.
“What are these new members bringing to the bottom line, that is an important question to answer,” Downin said.
Here’s a look at some of the projects outlined by Downin:
Member Megaphone
An i3 project called Member Megaphone focuses on making it easier for the credit union to execute and track member referrals.
Mary Beth Spuck, chief administrative officer at TwinStar CU in Olympia, Wash., said the idea came from her own credit union looking at the Uber ride-sharing app and noticing how “simple” it was, and based the effort on that program, she said.
Via Member Megaphone, each member is issued a unique ID code, and referrals are automated so members can refer via FaceBook, Twitter, text message email and other channels.
“When the new member joins the credit union, the unique ID code goes back to the member who made the referral and it is easy to track,” said Spuck, adding that referral rewards are then automatically deposited to the existing member’s account.
Downin said that when Member Megaphone was moved to the Filene Incubator and piloted by six CUs, they collectively netted 795 new members, $250,000 in new deposits and $900,000 new loans over two months.
Of the new members who enrolled, 33.7% also referred at least one additional member. One new member referred 22 other new members, ultimately leading to 161 new members from the one original referral.
“These credit unions in that two-month period saw 28% membership growth over the same period in the previous year when they grew new members by 2%,” Downin said.
HomEase
Turning to what can sometimes be a lengthy mortgage closing process, a project called HomEase—as CUToday.info previously reported—keeps members informed on a timely basis on the progress of the underwriting through automatically generated email or SMS push notifications.
Inspired by the Dominos app that lets consumers track the progress of their pizza order on their phone, HomEase sends members notifications each time an underwriting milestone is reached. Downin said that keeps members interested in the mortgage, especially first-time homebuyers whose underwriting can take a longer, avoids confusion, and helps stop members from backing out of the loan process.
“We had 11 credit unions test this and they loved it,” said Downin. “Two out of three members who used HomEase stayed with process all the way through closing.”
Downin said the program also reduced the average number of calls from homebuyers during the loan process from 6.1 to 4.4.
“That is a significant savings in employee time,” Downin said.
Shift
While only in the concept stage, Shift would allow smaller credit unions that want to expand product offerings, but lack the resources, to do so by collaborating with another participating credit union.
“Shift takes the shared branching model and aligns instead with products,” said Downin. “A $50-million credit union can’t afford to offer a product, say a prepaid card, but then partners with another credit union that does. The member gets the prepaid card from the other credit union, but the card is seen as falling under the umbrella of the original credit union.”
Downin said the concept is still somewhat rough, and that one of the biggest roadblocks to CUs buying into it is concern over another credit union stealing its members.
“But we did not see that happen with shared branching, so why would see that here?” said Downin.
Karma Direct
Finally, Karma Direct allows members to pool their rewards points and direct them to a charity of their choice.
Not only did 90% of Karma Direct users who were polled say they would use it regularly and that it raised the image of the credit union, 89% said they would use more of the credit union’s products as a result, Downin explained.