By Marsha King, President and CEO, Liberty of Congress FCU, Hyattsville, Md.

Our credit union was chartered in 1935 as a single sponsor: Library of Congress employees and has remained that way until the mid 1990s, when we merged a small and nearby credit union into us converting our charter to a multiple occupational. We still, at present, have only one operational branch in the Library of Congress Madison Building with our administrative and back office located in nearby Maryland.

I have been with the credit union for 16 years, during which it has grown from $32 million to $144 million currently serving 10,600 members. During this time, our management supported our core membership; The Library of Congress (LOC) and their strategies which included adding contractors and SEGs from LOC into our field of membership. We found this difficult for two reasons: contractors came and went before we had the opportunity to sign them up and obtaining a current list from LOC was not always possible.

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By Alix Patterson.

What the YMCA can teach credit unions about evolving to meet the social and economic challenges of today while staying true to their core values.

On a recent vacation to Florida, I was lamenting my inability to get in a daily swim since the hotel pool was the shape of a kidney bean and not much larger. My father, ever one to encourage my (sporadically) healthy behavior, promptly pulled out his YMCA membership card from back home in Bethesda, Maryland and offered to take me over to the local YMCA. I was skeptical. The local Y?

Little did I realize what the Y represents today. The Venice YMCA has some of the most advanced facilities I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. While I was enjoying a solitary lane in an Olympic-size pool, others—men and women, young and old—were pumping steel in the gym, enjoying yoga classes, even sipping coffee or fruit smoothies in the upstairs café. While waiting for my sons to finish their post-swim showers (a surprise hit for 2- and 4-year olds), I perused the announcements board, reading about classes to promote healthy eating, after-school care, support groups for everything from walking twice a week to running full marathons and more.

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By Alix Patterson.

What the YMCA can teach credit unions about evolving to meet the social and economic challenges of today while staying true to their core values.

On a recent vacation to Florida, I was lamenting my inability to get in a daily swim since the hotel pool was the shape of a kidney bean and not much larger. My father, ever one to encourage my (sporadically) healthy behavior, promptly pulled out his YMCA membership card from back home in Bethesda, Maryland and offered to take me over to the local YMCA. I was skeptical. The local Y?

Little did I realize what the Y represents today. The Venice YMCA has some of the most advanced facilities I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. While I was enjoying a solitary lane in an Olympic-size pool, others—men and women, young and old—were pumping steel in the gym, enjoying yoga classes, even sipping coffee or fruit smoothies in the upstairs café. While waiting for my sons to finish their post-swim showers (a surprise hit for 2- and 4-year olds), I perused the announcements board, reading about classes to promote healthy eating, after-school care, support groups for everything from walking twice a week to running full marathons and more.

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Setting Lofty Goals and Being Entrepreneurial Drives FSCC Forward

By Bonnie Kramer, COO of FSCC, San Dimas, Calif.

Financial Service Centers Cooperative (FSCC) is a non-profit cooperative CUSO that began as a shared branching network to give credit unions a cost-effective way to expand their footprints. Our mission is to “provide a cooperative network of convenient, low-cost access points so that credit unions can compete.” Our vision is simply to make American credit unions the most convenient financial institutions in the nation.

FSCC began in 1990 with the idea of establishing a system of stand-alone shared branches. This proved expensive and as a result, our ability to expand the network was limited. We needed a new model. We explored the concept of outlets, and in fact pioneered the effort to create an interface that would work with major teller platforms. We found a way to make many different teller platforms act as though they were one. This was a technological breakthrough that has carried FSCC forward ever since.

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By Seena Faqiri

Credit union branches are sprouting at a rate of almost 1,000 a year, but generally these are not the branches of small credit unions. With total office expenses rising 11.4% in 2006, even when credit unions outgrow their only branch, they find it very expensive to expand.

In June 2001, three credit unions had a ribbon cutting ceremony — at the same time and at the same location. Call Federal Credit Union ($257M in Richmond, VA) made this possible by opening a new branch in the nation’s first Credit Union Mall. As only credit unions would do, Call FCU, under the leadership of Roger Ball, invited two other smaller credit unions to share a new facility in Midlothian, Va. The invaluable expansion allowed both Connects Federal Credit Union ($64.4M in Richmond, VA) and Partners Financial Federal Credit Union ($59.5M in Glen Allen, VA, and named Richmond Federal at the time of the grand opening) to expand their reach and convenience with one affordable decision. The Credit Union Mall allowed Connects FCU and Partners FFCU to expand their operations with actual branch space, a luxury neither credit union had previously enjoyed.

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By Nick Connors

One of the many challenges of running a business of any size is properly allocating and managing corporate purchases. Although company checks and business credit cards have long been the standard form of payment among businesses, many companies are now turning to procurement cards as a fast, efficient, and cost-saving measure.

Practice What You Preach

Teachers Credit Union (IN, $1.7B) has been offering procurement cards, also called “purchasing cards,” to their members’ businesses. Before doing so, however, Teachers tested the product internally. “You have to know what you sell,” says Amy Sink, Chief Financial Officer for Teachers. So employees at Teachers were given procurement cards in an attempt to see how they liked the product and how it could best be used.

Continue reading "Procuring more than Office Supplies: Small Businesses Demand Flexibility in Payment Options" »

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By Claire Dayrit

Local banks were not providing good business service lending, so Arizona State stepped in with a full range of popular service.

In April 2005, Arizona State Credit Union began to explore business banking because its Board believed providing business banking products and services would benefit both the credit union and its members.

The credit union would gain financial benefit from funding future projects and member services. Chuck Anderson, SVP of Business Banking, says that Arizona State’s research regarding the members’ perspective was also positive. “Members with small businesses reported their existing financial providers to be impersonal, arbitrary, and disinterested in meeting the needs of small business. By contrast, they loved the credit union, the staff, the caring, and the service levels experienced in their consumer banking.”

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By Maurice Smith, president, Local Government FCU, Raleigh, N.C.

Working Harder to Build a Strong Brand

Our credit union began as a reaction to a North Carolina court case that said local government employees could not qualify for membership in North Carolina’s State Employees’ Credit Union (SECU), one of the country’s largest. Accordingly, Local Government FCU (LGFCU) set up business and accepted membership from persons employed by cities, counties, local authorities, local hospitals, firefighter companies, libraries and the like, along with their family members.

We have our own corporate governance and our own management, but from the beginning we established a strong symbiotic relationship with SECU, which provided office space, branch services and operational support. Our relationship is not one of a joint venture but more that of a credit union to a single-sponsor. We share a common service platform and we are dependent on SECU as the older and larger credit union.

Continue reading "Strategic Planning to Make a Credit Union Stand Out" »

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By Dane Coalson

Whether you are looking to expand your reach in the community, provide more convenience to existing members, or just open a cost-effective location with expanded hours, you might be considering the possibility of in-store branching. But before you proceed, you should ask yourself: “How do I identify a partner who is right for my credit union?

Finding the best partner is much more complicated than simply expanding your service to a convenient location. Linda Boring, Senior VP of Administration at Community America Credit Union, advises that you should “approach in-store branching as if you are entering into a mutual partnership, and not just adding another branch.” According to Bryan Jones and Keith Fernandez of Denali Alaskan Federal Credit Union, “There are two levels you need to examine when considering potential partners from the retail world: the ability to form a synergistic relationship, and the geographic location of the possible branches.” The relationship with your partner is the most important aspect of an in-store branch, so forming a partnership should be examined carefully.

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By Bill Birdwell, President and CEO Southeast Corporate
When I came to Southeast in 2001, it was pretty much a plain vanilla corporate. I was charged with changing that approach in order to create the kind of corporate the members would need in order to succeed in the future. I began with strategies linked to a scorecard that was basically my own version of a Balanced Scorecard. We used it to monitor and track six areas of focus: New Products, Quality Service, Staff Development, Professional Image, Technology, and Safety and Soundness. Over the next few years we successfully transformed the corporate into an organization that offered members a much wider variety of products and services. At the same time we began to leverage technology, incorporating it into our products and automating many of our processes.

Continue reading "Approaches to Strategic Planning" »

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