One obvious thing came to light through this research: Credit union growth strategies are extremely diverse. This research found no single path or “silver bullet” that delivers growth. Instead, growth appears to be the result of hard strategic choices that create a winning strategy and then having the internal alignment, discipline and organizational culture to execute that strategy.
Top performers tend to make these decisive choices — to do some things and not others — at every stage of the “Playing to Win” cascade to ensure their strategy delivers unique value to members. For example, recognizing that major shifts in distribution channels were afoot, many top performers chose to acquire prior to the pandemic those capabilities, e.g., digital lending, digital new account opening and APIs, needed to win against the major banks, challenger banks and other fintech competitors. Also, given the low interest rate environment, many top performers chose to de-emphasize investment income and investment management capabilities prior to the pandemic.
In closing, the following two quotes (see Figure 26) show dramatically different paths for two members that resulted from very dissimilar strategic choices made by their credit unions.
"My credit union is the most efficient banking experience I have had. Across all platforms, from in-person to live phone to strictly online, the know how to do whatever my money matters require. I’ve recommended them to all my associates."
"The recent merger… has been a definite downer for the customer. The lines are longer, the phone wait time is longer, and worst of all, [online banking] will not even let you on sometimes for over 10 minutes… If this does not change, we will be moving all our accounts."
Source: Member Reviews on Google Play and DepositAccounts.com
On the left, credit union member A is full of praise for their credit union. This person has clearly benefited from the credit unions’ strategic choices related to distribution channels and capabilities. This credit union seems to have chosen to win by making it easy to do business with them and by deeply understanding their members’ needs.
By contrast, member B on the right is bitterly disappointed with their ability to access their credit union in the wake of a recent merger. This could be a case of a credit union pursuing a decisive merger strategy but not choosing to have the requisite member service, digital and post-merger integration capabilities in place.
What types of outcomes are your strategic choices enabling for your members?
2021 CUNA Mutual Group internal data and Experian, “Auto Finance Insights: State of the Automotive Finance Market Q1 2021,” Q1, 2021
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