Bellco: Over the line?
Posted by Trey Reeme on September 24th, 2007
From an email I’ll keep anonymous:
New Horizons was put into conservatory status by the NCUA last year, apparently due to its exposure to indirect loans via Centrix. The credit union in Texas won the bid to take over the credit union.
In my view, that makes the marketing campaign even more cynical in nature – I can’t imagine how the phrase “New Horizons was recently bought by a Texas-based credit union, which means the money you’ve grown at New Horizons is leaving Denver” would sit with NH members who have stuck it out the past year.
I think I am a lightweight because that strikes me as a really cruel thing to do. In another way though, I guess NH management had lost its focus and market forces are now at work.
As Tim commented both here and on Ron’s post,
This has been an interesting topic to watch how people side. As my informal poll indicates, close to 80% of my blog readers say ‘Great job Bellco.’ This is surprising to me as I believe most people looking at credit union industry blogs tend to be on the altruistic side like Trey. . . .
It is interesting to watch the credit union industry struggle with how competitive to be. On one hand, we’re all in this together, almost like a quasi-franchise network, but then on the other hand there is real secrecy and animosity towards direct competitors and a reluctancy to work together to defeat the big evil banks.
And as Tony wrote,
We have all been competing against each other for years. I guess now its out in the open.
Trey,
When you mention the “cooperative cooperative”, I assume you are referring to Principle #6 of The Seven Cooperative Principles for Credit Unions.
With these principles in mind, I have a question.
Can one “Autonomous and Independent” (Principle #4) Credit Union become involved in “uncooperative” measures if it is fueled by “Concern for the Community” (Principle #7) ?
Now I’m not so naive to think that Bellco’s only motives for this campaign were community based, but you could make the argument that keeping resources local does benefit the community that Bellco serves.
Just thought it would be fun to take a look at it and discuss it in that light…
As someone who works for a credit union in Colorado, I guess I was more suprised than anything else when I saw this Bellco campaign…I’m not sure I’ve ever seen credit unions go “head to head” like this.
While I don’t hold it against Bellco – I do think that it could hurt the spirit of cooperation between credit unions.
Mark, that’s a great point – IMHO it violates principle 6. Big deal if it may meet Principle 7.
This case does have some similarities with Wings that haven’t been discussed yet. Namely one CU wanting to lure members of another CU with $.
And by the way, one of the last comments we had on the Wings/Continental deal was from Roger Skulley:
I was very happy to respond:
V, that’s the biggest example I can name where the claws have come out like this.
Mark,
And if a giant CU decides that gobbling up all other credit unions displays concern for the community….? What’s good, and who decides?
Again I stand by my “no bribe” comment made on Tim’s blog.
The icky part to me is the $100 bribe. The local angle would’ve been great all by itself. Why did they have to cheapen it??