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.

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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 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

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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.

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