Services, Training & Advice

Enhancing the Member Experience

As CUNA celebrated its 70th anniversary, the association implemented many new changes that helped us increase our ability to meet credit unions' needs.

We implemented a number of new learning events to help credit unions respond to the constantly changing environment. Some topical examples include Check 21 and other compliance issues, financial counseling for members, and Spanish-language training for credit union staff. The 2004 Future Forum realized a record number of attendees and received rave reviews from its participants. CUNA received positive feedback on the Welcome Center and registration process, its professional staff, and most importantly, the presenters and programs.

CUNA was also delighted by the success of the first-ever National Youth Saving Challenge during National Credit Union Youth Week. Participating credit unions collected nearly $1.4 million in saving account deposits from young members, which is a giant step in encouraging healthy saving habits and promoting the financial education efforts of credit unions.

In the future, CUNA will continue to meet and exceed our members' expectations, increase our beneficial product and service offerings, and uphold the rich tradition and founding principles of the credit union movement.

Learning Opportunities

By year's end The CUNA >Center for Professional Development (CPD) trained more than 10,000 credit union staff, managers, CEOs and volunteers via Webinars, audio conferences and face-to-face events.

One new on-site addition enables credit unions to better help their members deal with financial issues within the walls of the credit union. As the average household debt continues to increase and bankruptcies remain at all time highs, the two-part Certified Financial Counselor School covers many finance basics and the role of financial counselors, and offers the opportunity to receive certification as a financial counselor upon successful completion.

Online educational opportunities for busy professionals were increased, recognizing the professional's lack of time to travel to outside events while taking advantage of their increasing computer knowledge. In addition to the e-Schools and Webinars, CPD offers 115 online training courses that maximized convenience in training for nearly 12,000 credit union employees from 692 credit unions this year.

This year also marked the 50th anniversary of the longest running continuing-education program of its kind in the credit union movement-the CUNA Management School in Madison, Wis. This three-year management development program challenges credit union professionals to be outstanding leaders in the credit union movement.

Research & Advice

The 2004-2005 Credit Union Fees Survey, from CUNA's Center for Research & Advice, examined more than 65 credit union fee types. Account structures were documented and analyzed for credit unions of all sizes, and compared with banks where available. Overall, the survey showed that credit unions remained less likely than other financial institutions to charge fees in general.

In one of several Environmental Scan (E-Scan) strategic planning resources released this year, credit unions were found to be doing well compared with other employers at providing employer-sponsored health insurance coverage to American workers.

Advisory Service's introduced an expanded range of cost-effective services that bring the expertise of top-level advisers and industry analysts to credit unions across a broad spectrum of operational, technology, and lending services. CUNA's unparalleled knowledge of the credit union marketplace assures relevant, targeted advice to help achieve the credit union's business objectives.

One example is the new site-selection tool to help credit unions easily and efficiently search for potential new branch or ATM locations. Pointrac saves credit unions time and money by pinpointing the best potential locations for success based on the credit union's expansion strategy.

Additionally, The Point for Credit Union Research ana Advice, an increasingly popular online resource tool providing the latest statistics and trends in the credit union industry, was redesigned to aid site navigation and research tool access. The redesign, which was based heavily on subscriber input, relocated many commonly used features such as archives and other valuable research tools to the site's home page (thepoint.cuna.org) for quicker, easier access.

Online Resources

Searching the more than 30,000 pages of content on CUNA's Web site was made easier in February with the addition of "Google" search hardware and software. Visitors request more than 900,000 pages each month, so having a dedicated server to index and run search queries insured a higher degree of accuracy, return, and ultimately visitor satisfaction.

Hispanic Outreach

To help credit unions better serve the financial needs of the growing Hispanic community, CUNA formed a Hispanic Outreach Task Force in 2003. The group spent more than a year gathering research and developing its final report. The report, along with a variety of other information, is available online in CUNA's Interactive Hispanic Resource Center, which includes a news service, listserv, useful resource links and a file library.

To serve this fast growing market, CUNA added two additional levels to its extremely popular Spanish for CUs eSchool offering to help credit union personnel more effectively use Spanish language skills with Hispanic members.

Finally, the Public Education component of CUNA's National Credit Union Brand Campaign was translated into Spanish to raise the Spanish-speaking public's understanding of credit unions as member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperatives. The ads employ a person-on-the-street format and consist of television, radio, collateral print materials, and also include bus boards.

Youth Financial Education

During the 2003-2004 school year, credit unions took the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) High School Financial Planning Program to 78,104 students in 1,221 schools. In fact, the America's Credit Union Logo has been proudly displayed on these financial planning materials distributed to more than two million high-school students since CUNA first started to underwrite the program in 2000.

CUNA also introduced the first-ever National Youth Saving Challenge, coinciding with April's National Credit Union Youth Week, in order to further promote financial education efforts and encourage saving habits. The inaugural year of the saving challenge produced exemplary results. This first year's total deposits more than doubled the amount the 143 participating credit unions originally anticipated, as young members deposited nearly $1.4 million in their saving accounts and opened more than 1,850 new accounts.

Credit unions also introduced the importance of saving, budgeting, prioritizing, their local credit union, and more to middle school students through a unique school sponsorship program that included live theater productions on financial literacy. CUNA worked with the National Theatre for Children and the National Youth Involvement Board to make Googolplex@school exclusively available to the credit union movement.

Credit unions were also able to provide teen and young adult members with information on a variety of financial matters through a series of recently launched interactive Web-based tutorials, the Guides to Independence.

Serving Small Business

As credit unions now have more flexibility to make member business loans, CUNA developed a resource on its Web site (businessservices.cuna.org) geared toward helping credit unions better serve this market. The resource is a compilation of introductory and educational materials for credit unions looking to break into this market or expand their current program. CUNA's Regulatory Advocacy team also provided guidance the NCUA used to improve its member business loan rules.

With credit unions also coming to realize the benefits of providing small-business services-ineluding multiple accounts-to their members as well as themselves, CUNA developed a suite of handbooks for entrepreneurial members to explain the many facets of launching, running and financing a small business. The three-book series-Fundamentals of Small-Business Finance-is designed to help members make informed small-business choices when: launching your own small business, running your small business, and getting a handle on small-business finance.

CUNA Publications

Two CUNA publications were honored for excellence in design from FOLIO: magazine, a national publication covering magazines and magazine management. Credit Union National Associations Annual Report, 2003 won a silver award in the best supplemental, business-to-business category, and Credit Union Magazine was also honored with a silver award for best redesign in the business-tobusiness category for publications of less than 100,000 circulation.

Credit Union Magazine also received an honor of a different sort when a copy of the July 2004 edition was displayed in the Pentagon in recognition of its coverage of military-based credit unions. The magazine, originally titled The Bridge, has documented many memorable moments in the history of the credit union movement since it was first published in June of 1924, with Roy Bergengren at the helm as the publication's original editor.

To help credit unions fulfill legal disclosure requirements of The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, CUNA developed a statement stuffer to help credit unions explain the consumer aspects of the law to its members. The stuffer, appropriately named "Check 21 Speeds Checking, Sinks Your Float," sold well over 4.5 million copies.

Finally, to help credit unions respond to bankers efforts to tax credit unions, CUNA developed a special edition of its Home & Family Finance magazine. "If Banks Win, You Lose" examines bankers' attacks and defends the credit union tax exemption. Initial copies of the issue, slated to release first quarter of 2005, sold out almost immediately and required an additional press run. In addition, CUNA and its member credit unions have also distributed more than one million "Why Credit Unions Are Tax Exempt" statement stuffers this year.

John Franklin

CUNA Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer-Madison

Copyright Credit Union National Association, Inc. Jun 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved