We just finished a conference last week. The conference went well. But not everything was perfect.
THE 'tude
Credit unions almost have more of a presence in high schools than those neon-green poster-boards covered in a rainbow of magic marker with messages for fundraisers or club meetings.
The mobile channel is now mainstream, with some financial institutions reporting more consumer interactions via the mobile channel than any other. However, the majority are wary of investing in promotion of their mobile banking offerings and remain unsure of what to strive for in terms of adoption metrics.
Credit unions offering mortgage services are painfully aware of the regulatory mandates regarding mortgage documentation. When loans become a sizable part of the business, more staff are assigned for longer periods of time in manually-intensive processes. They must receive, verify, and process all mortgage-related documents.
For most of their lives the words “tipping point” were linked only in the field of epidemiology, where they referred the point at which an infectious disease reaches a point beyond any local ability to control it from spreading, and in the field (literally) of manual labor, where operators of wheelbarrows develop an unspoken knowledge of exactly where the tipping point lies.
Every single day your team is affecting lives. This is NOT a “pick up your paycheck on Friday” kinda job. We deal with numbers, but this is not cold math.
It is time that we remember who we are as credit unions and what we stand for. It is time to revisit our core principles and value and advocate how credit unions have made America and Americans financially stronger. It is time to stop apologizing for our desire to grow credit unions and give more people the opportunity to join credit unions.
Mention the word “payments” to credit unions and the response isn’t a whole lot different from what happens when you use the word “walk” within hearing range of your dog; lots of jumping up and down and tail wagging and sheer-out-of-its-mind-even-though-we-did-this-a-few-hours-ago excitement, but in this case over mobile devices and digital wallets and Apple Pay.
The 1970s were a turning point in consumer credit. National credit bureaus made it easier for lenders to check the ability of individuals to meet their obligations.
One of the roadblocks we often see with credit unions is that they do not have quality data that is necessary for the analysis process. The key is to incorporate data management strategies that ensure a credit union has quality data for analysis