CUNA YES Summit -- Day 1, Chapter 1: Innovation
Posted by Matt Dean on December 7th, 2006
Yesterday was the first day of CUNA’s first annual Your Essential Strategies (YES) Summit focused on serving 18-to-30s (aka Gen Y). Like some of the other authors on Open Source CU, I’m skeptical of efforts to “target” an age-based demographic, largely because those efforts towards 18-to-30s usually involve advice like “use hip-hop in your marketing so you can relate” (real advice featured in the CU Times) and “treat those youngsters as irresponsible over-spenders in need of a good ‘get your act together’.”
I say all that in order to stress the following point: so far the YES Summit is getting it right. The real way you get younger people interested in your credit union is to offer an innovative, compelling value proposition and by serving as a trusted advocate for financial guidance.
The opening speakers, Danielle Chatfield of KEMBA Financial CU and Susan Siegel of Sunmark CU focused on the need to innovate. I know, I know – innovation is a fun thing to talk about because it makes everyone feel warm and trendy in their bellies but usually translates into “That would be cool. Oh well, back to work.” But based on my previous discussions with Danielle (she’s an i3 member) and the impression I got from Susan, neither of them take innovation lightly. Susan’s Sunmark has implemented an online-only savings account (currently at 5.25% APY) and Danielle has demonstrated her commitment to innovation through her involvement with i3 (plus I hear good things about her from fellow CU nerds).
They covered several of the innovations we’ve discussed here (Zopa in particular) and stressed the need for innovation to grow out of user needs and that innovation only happens when you actually implement something in the marketplace. Good ideas don’t count.
I also liked their closing quote:
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”—General Eric Shinseki, Retired Chief of Staff, US Army
How appropriate.
So my question for you, loyal credit union innovators, is this. Are your CUs following up on the rhetoric? Do the CEOs who nod their head during discussion of innovation (this was more from the CEO Network than the YES Summit) actually follow through? Do they give you the encouragement and resources to try and fail?
Update: Trey reminded me that Susan was also a Filene i3 member. Sorry, Susan! I thought you looked familiar.
We’re trying… We formed a “Gen Y” task force to come up with innovative product / service ideas that would appeal to this market, and then we held focus groups last month to have Gen Yers take a look at the ideas we came up with and give us feedback.
Now the next step: taking the ideas the focus group liked – and putting them into action!
We also have had a committee together for 6 months made up of Gen Y, with reps from almost all depts. We have gone through many of the ideas presented in the Summit. We are hosting a focus group next week. We have several ideas, and this summit has reinforced many of our ideas.
We have been given the support of the CEO, CIO, CAO and most of Sr. Mgt. We are told we have the support of the BOD. Once we present, lets hope that they beleive that we need to make the changes, NOW.
Only 10% of our membership is 30 or under. That is scary, we are not even involved in the competition and we are a thriving CU. Lets hope the board believes in what we need to do.
Matt / Trey,
I gave you guys a big shout-out during my talk at Ignite Seattle / Make:Magazine last night.
Keep up the great work!
-Jesse Robbins Lead Organizer Black Rock Federal
It’s not about “innovative product / service ideas”, it’s about demonstrating your passion.
Your CEO, CIO, CAO, and Board of Directors need to do much more than telling you about their support. They need to be meeting directly with the people you are trying to reach, and talking about how being a member will make a difference.
If you want to increase your “Gen-Y” membership, get one elected to your board.
-Jesse
Great to meet you at the YES Summit. Learned a lot from your presentation and our conversations.
The tale of Vystar is disturbing for a number of reasons. I get your point about the credit union making a big mistake by failing to address the member’s complaint (“worst bank ever”) headon. Ignoring the problem only made it more damaging. Still, I’m not entirely comfortable with the power of the Web to blow things out of proportion. Could the CU have appeased this member, even with a prompt and solicitous response? If not, what recourse does it have to repair its online reputation?
P.S. The link is zopa.com not org.
Phil,
Great to meet you as well! We had quite an extended discussion about the Vystar case on a previous thread. You can see that there were various opinions surrounding this specific case and the amplified power of online comments in general.
Have you ever read “The Cluetrain Manifesto:”http://www.cluetrain.com/book/index.html? It talks about the shifting power caused by the Internet. One of the points is that it doesn’t matter whether you like it or not—it’s happening.
Also, thanks for the heads up on the Zopa link.
Matt:
It was great meeting you at the YES conference. I totally agree with you on how CUs and other businesses need to learn that marketing to Gen Y’ers doesn’t necessarily mean you need to give away iPods or stereotypically caste us aside because of “how bad we run up the credit cards bills”. As a Gen-Yer myself, I not only became more aware of how our generation handles money, but how I can use this information in my job to help my credit union.
Thanks for opening up some eyes!
Ellen, CFE FCU