LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla.–Three credit union CEOs have shared different perspectives on what they are seeking to accomplish, on how they are helping members with both joy and through dark moments, their challenges with brand awareness, as well as how they view and deploy technology.
The comments and insights came during NACUSO’s Network Conference here. Participants included Chad Miller, president and CEO of Southwest Louisiana CU, Tansley Stearns, president and CEO of Community Financial Credit Union in Michigan, and Brandon Michaels, president and CEO of OneAZ Credit Union in Arizona.
The session was moderated by NACUSO CEO Ronaldo Hardy. Here is some of what was discussed:
Hardy: What are you doing in your CEO?
Michaels (who has been in job less than a year): I feel like my secret sauce is energizing organization, inspiring people, elevating people. I’m all about asking the questions, getting out of the way and letting them do it. It all starts with the mission and why we get up every day. I came to OneAZ and they were very successful, but they were lacking something, which was the ‘why.’ We came up with the inspiration to be a trailblazer and to inspire dreams. We are trying to make a difference in parts of the community that are underserved.
Hardy: I love listening to you talk about your vision of creating joy and on leaning into uncomfortable conversations. Tell us more about your vision?
Stearns: We are thrilled to be thinking differently about financial services and creating joy. We know most people don’t wake up thinking about what’s next with their finances. And for a lot of people it’s about fear, and we want to make it something different.
We have 17% awareness, so we have work to do. Our name is a bit of stumbling block; there are a lot of Community something somethings out there, so we’ve done a lot of work to make it distinctive.
We have been listening a lot. That’s one of our superpowers. We want to be in members’ magnificent moments, but also in moments that are very dark, such as divorce or death or cancer. Those all have financial implications. We have been working to figure out the underpinnings of those moments and meeting people in those times. We think that can be a differentiator.
Hardy: Southwest Louisiana Credit Union has become more than a financial enterprise. You are interwoven into all aspects of your community. What has it been like to dive deep into that?
Miller: We have been thinking about what does that ‘help’ mean in people helping people and how can you be a catalyst for that? So, really, everything that we dive into or that we're getting into has that purpose in mind. It's the community impact and it's how can we really be embedded into our communities.
I describe it this way: if we left Lake Charles (La.) or went away for whatever reason, would our community to feel it? I can resoundingly say yes, because of all the work that we're able to do. We’ve partnered with a local nonprofit health center. We’ve created a true partnership where no one had access to financial services and now we have a full-time employee there. We’ve started a food pantry in a few of our branches.
We’ve recognized the needs in our community and attacked those.
Hardy: What does the future of credit unions look like to you?
Miller: We have to utilize CUSOs and those partnerships and our power of collective collaboration. I think we talk about it a lot and we do a decent job of it, but especially for smaller credit unions—we’re $175 million in assets—from a grander perspective or partnership perspective, we want to be able to jump in with these CUSOs and provide products and services that we would never even be able to imagine at an affordable price.
I think our future is really dependent on those types of partnerships to make it affordable and that allow us to scale and play with the big boys.
Stearns: It depends largely on what we choose to do. I worry deeply about our future. We can’t be as patient as we used to be. Credit unions continue to diminish in the way consumers see us and that’s because we’ve taken a pass on investing in technology. If we can really live up to the dreams Ed Filene had for us, we will be doing so at a really fast pace.
Michaels. It really depends on what your individual CU’s strategy is. I’d say most credit unions are not good at strategy, they are good at tactics. We can’t not good at strategy anymore. Credit unions by and large try to be all things to all people and we become masters of none.
I think there is a role for credit unions in the future, but there are some must-haves. We must rid ourselves of legacy technologies. We want to be there for life’s moments but we have to acknowledge we can’t serve everyone. I think there is a role for credit unions in the future, but it has to be a niche. That’s hard for a lot of CUs to do because they feel they are leaving people behind.
I’m a third generation credit union CEO and we keep fighting the name and trying to convince people to join a credit union and they have no earthly idea what a credit union is. Change the fricking name. I don’t know what a better name would be. When I arrived (as CEO) we were at $3.5 billion in assets, we spend $7 million a year on marketing, and we have 10% unaided awareness in the state.
Hardy: Talk about what it’s like trying to navigate both the joy and life’s darker moments.
Stearns: My commitment to our organization is that the human beings inside the credit union are just as important as the human beings we serve, and to attract the next generation of talent we have to create an environment that is inspirational, that is aspirational.
We invite people to think about those joyful moments and how we can create that and have real pride in who we are as an organization…We also feel we can make a difference in the darkest moment in someone's life.
(We’re doing a pilot) with an organization called First Step that supports those who are impacted by domestic violence. One of the reasons that people may not leave (abusive relationships) is because they may not be able to, the financial underpinnings may be preventing them from doing so. If can make a difference in somebody's life in that way—and our team has been trained to do that--they feel such pride in what they're bringing to life.
Hardy: You really love leaning into technology. There can be a struggle in CUs over whether technology drives people out of the industry. How do we balance the core philosophies of CUs and embrace technology?
Michaels: Technology is the catalyst for how we can engage better or more with our membership, just like the branches used to be that when the lines were out the door.
I don't believe that they're mutually exclusive and I think the way we go forward is utilizing technology to serve a number of needs, and that comes from listening, it comes from understanding and from being empathetic.
It’s not one or the other. AI is a perfect example that if used correctly it can fundamentally enhance perspective on how members can accomplish their dreams.
The definition of services is changing. I think there's a lot of crazies who are still trying to serve the way that we've always served, and I think technology can help us get to the way that consumers expect us to serve. We have to be there in life's greatest challenges.
Miller: I was talking to someone and reminding them that we are dealing with humans. We take for granted what people don’t know, whether a car buying process or a home buying process, and if we make that so complicated they will either quit or go to someone else. We have challenges in making it simplistic and easy. When we do that, we have seen volume double and triple the volume we usually see.
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