RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif.--It isn’t just a question that members will ask and answer. It will be asked by management teams, CU employees and the credit union community itself, according to Ryan Battles, principal in the Financial Services office of EY, who addressed “COVID-19 Scenario Planning for Credit Unions: Respond, Stabilize, Recover and Transform,” during CO-OP's THINK20 Virtual event.
“How do you want to be portrayed at the end of this,” asked Battles. “Did you do everything you could do to maintain trust with your members? It’s driving the way our clients have responded. How do you quickly adjust the channels where you are interacting with your members? What are you going to do to help maintain member service levels in an environment where you can’t be there?”
Three Trends
Battles said there are three major trends that deserve attention by CU leaders:
- Physical safety. “How do we operate branches in ways that keep members and employees safe?”
- Contactless payments. “Contactless has become popular for obvious reasons. Contactless payments and even virtual ATM transactions, anything you can do to reduce the physical contact with a member is something we have heard nearly every client discuss.”
- Helping people to understand what is happening with coronavirus. Battles said that includes answering “how are we responding, what programs are available, and how are we supporting them.”
Moving Forward
Moving forward, as the coronavirus pandemic eventually fades and organizations begin to look at returning employees to the workplace, Battles said some are examining the use of “internal contact tracing” by using mobile devices to measure staff movement and keep workers safe, as well as thinking even bigger picture—who needs to return to work?
“I think one of the upsides of this has been many organizations have seen how effectively you can work remotely,” said Battles. “The need to travel will go down. Telecommuting, teleconferencing will become the new normal, and with it the reduction in expense.”