FAIRHOPE, Ala.–The CEOs of six CUSOs took to the stage as CU*SOUTH hosted its CU Visionary Conference and Annual Meeting at the Perdido Beach Resort here. The theme of the 2016 Visionary Conference was “Burn It Down, Build It Up – Redefining Everything Credit Union”.
“We’re looking ahead towards the next 10-15 years, and asking ourselves, ‘what are the mindsets that we need to burn down in order to rebuild our credit unions to address the needs of our members in 2026 and 2031,” said CU*SOUTH CEO Leo Vaulin. “Members are telling us we need to change the way we engage by becoming better online retailers and being better attuned to what members need at specific moments in their lives. Look at Amazon – they’re always offering highly-tuned product recommendations, and constantly working to improve the speed of delivery. We’re deploying a more open, flexible architecture so that our credit unions can deliver instant offers when a member shops for a big-ticket items or an investment opportunity. And we’re constantly improving the speed of closing the loan or opening the account using the fewest steps possible.”
Randy Karnes, CEO of CU*Answers, and Greg Smith, CEO of CU*NorthWest, joined Vaulin in the conference general session to deliver a message of successful collaboration.
“Instead of having a single CUSO serving CUs nationally, we have three CUSOs with three CEOs and three boards all working towards a common mission,” added Vaulin. “We’re encouraging CUs to think along similar models. A recent success story is the rkGoBig CUSO, where six CUs in the Mid-Atlantic region joined to form an operational CUSO around our common core, CU*BASE. One CU focuses on compliance, another on back office; each one takes a role in serving their partners. It’s a collaboration of equals, and reduces operating costs while improving the quality of the service, without the need to sacrifice any CU’s core identity through mergers. We’re working with other CUs around the country to support the development of similar operational models.”
Joining the CU*BASE core providers at the Visionary Conference were three partner CUSOs: Scott Collins, CEO of Xtend, a managed services provider including call center, back office, marketing, and shared branching; Bret Weekes, CEO of eDOC Innovations, an e-commerce document imaging and digital transaction management developer; and Liz Winninger, CEO of ChatterYak, a social media marketing CUSO.
Meanwhile, Southern Gas Federal Credit Union is expanding its reach by offering more services such as online account opening, remote loan closing, bill pay, text banking and custom branded mobile apps – and still decreasing overall cost–by moving to CU*South.
“We are so excited to be part of the CU*South family,” said Tina Plante, CEO of Southern Gas FCU states. “We chose CU*South not only because of their products and services, but because we wanted a partner who truly believes in the credit union philosophy of “people helping people.” Being a part of a CUSO gives our credit union monetary advantages not only in overall core processing services, but also by leveraging the buying power of a network of over 250 credit unions sharing resources, building network partnerships, and collectively contracting other vendors. The industry leading toolsets and resources CU*South provides will now allow us to streamline and automate time consuming and expensive tasks. Southern Gas can now focus more on our members and less on our processes.”
CU*South Director of CUSO Development Starla Honea added: “Thanks to our close cooperation with our credit union partners and owners, CU*South was able to offer Southern Gas FCU a complete, integrated solution that includes both core and much more – everything the credit union needs to gain memberships and loans in a rapidly-evolving market. Our mission is to empower our credit unions to grow; as a CUSO, we can do this through a collaborative pricing model that does away with the per-module costs that non-CUSO vendors inflict on credit unions. With CU*South, credit unions can add new product and services without having to take the risk of budgeting an up-front cost for a new component – it’s already in our standard offering.”