BROOKFIELD, Wis.—Sound strategic planning and rapid innovation are needed from CUs as the industry moves quickly toward a radically different way of doing business in the year 2020, according to Fiserv.
Mark Sievewright, president, Credit Union Solutions at Fiserv, pointed out that change is coming thanks to technology advancements redefining how consumers and businesses choose to transact and interact, continuing U.S. demographic and social change, and a regulatory framework asserting greater compliance demands than at any time in history.
Sievewright offered his insights as part of CUToday.info's Credit Unions 2020 series.
“Credit unions have a great opportunity to cement and leverage their unique ‘not-for-profit’ member-centric philosophies,” said Sievewright. “Faced with rising competition—including the rapid emergence of non-traditional players in areas like payments—credit union leaders will need to focus hard to match changing consumer expectations, and innovate faster than ever before.”
Mark Sievewright
The starting point, insisted Sievewright, is a robust strategic planning process that determines the CU’s overarching strategy and defines—at a macro level—how it will allocate its available resources in best serving the needs of its members in terms of products, channels and service.
“In addition, iterative and effective business planning processes and financial management are pre-requisites for success,” explained Sievewright. “From a more practical perspective, credit unions will need to fuel loan growth—particularly in real estate and auto lending environments. From the perspectives of member acquisition and retention, CUs will need to meet or exceed member expectations in mobile banking delivery as part of a balanced delivery model that also includes branching, ATM access and telephone-based service.”
Additionally, as the payments landscape evolves and becomes more competitive, credit unions will need to offer relevant money movement and payment services to their members, said Sievewright.
Steps To Take
Among a number of important steps to be taken today to prepare for 2020, according to Sievewright:
• Driving deeper knowledge and insight of the CU’s members and their financial needs
• Identifying ways to drive loan growth with marketing strategies and tactics to capture more share-of-market.
• Evolving channel capabilities toward a digital delivery focus
• Keeping pace with advances being made in payments.
• Effective talent/human resources management.
Sievewright emphasized that “best-in-class results” for clients is Fiserv’s mission, which will help carry CUs into 2020 and beyond.
“We provide our more than 2,300 credit union clients with products and solutions they need to best serve their members and drive growth,” said Sievewright. “In the areas of core processing, digital channels, payments, lending and risk management, we have led the way in innovation and offer an unmatched array of market-leading solutions for credit unions. We enable additional value through the efficiency and effectiveness of how these solutions operate together. Underpinning all this is a team of professionals steeped in credit union values and traditions with deep subject matter expertise and dedicated to serving our clients.”