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Confessions of a Credit Union Strategic Planner — Podcast

Young Adults at laptops beneath illustrated financial words like Growth, Budget, and Save. Jim This, a strategic planner with over 20 years experience guiding credit unions in their strategic thinking, offers his insights about how to create a remarkable member experience, why being small is not the same thing as being local, marketing to millennials, and specific examples of credit unions that have created breakthrough strategies.

Cameron’s Top Takeaways:

  1. It’s easier to advertise for rates than service. When service is your differentiator, you need to focus on how you package that into a meaningful, focused experience for your members. Service is not a meaningful thing to advertise in a mass media because it will sound like everyone else. If you go this route, you focus on fantastic onboarding, cross-selling, and back-office training.
  2. Being small is not the same thing as being local. The advantages of being small are speed and flexibility, so use those to your benefit to be engaged in the local community.
  3. Look at millennials as a market and account for the realities of student loan debt and parents’ influence in choosing a financial institution. Engage in programs that go beyond the pre-teen age group, like first car purchase and first credit card, rather than focusing only on having the coolest electronic services.

Listen to the full podcast on: iTunes | SoundCloud