By Shama Campo
Last July I had the opportunity to travel from Trinidad and Tobago to Harvard University for the Advanced Leadership Institute with a group of professional credit union executives. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from the best and share in the development of myself and, by extension, my credit union.
The credit union movement in Trinidad and Tobago is undergoing some changes in legislation. We trust that this will enhance the image of the movement. We have over 120 active credit unions with an asset base of approximately $8 billion that are surviving the current downturn in the economy.
My credit union is one of the top-performing credit unions in the industry. We have over $400 million in assets and close to 11,000 members. We face some of the same challenges as our North American credit unions with respect to customer service excellence, products and services relevance, and membership satisfaction.
Speaking to some of the participants of the Advanced Leadership Institute, I got the sense that credit unionism is credit unionism no matter where you are in the world. So it is great that a university like Harvard could put together a program tailored just for us.
Credit unions continue to be stable financial institutions in this region. We are governed by bylaws and legislation that are changing as the movement has evolved into such a huge financial entity. No longer are credit unions "small" business. We do maintain, though, our identity as a "member-centric" movement in almost all aspects of our operations and guidelines.
This is why I have a special interest in service to members and would like to share some of my critical Advanced Leadership Institute learning touch points in this area. For example, we were reminded that not all products marketed by credit unions, banks and other financial institutions may be good for your credit union, and one solution does not fit all. Though your financial results may be great, your customers may not like the service you provide but may also have no other alternative but you.
An example of member dissatisfaction was presented in a Harvard Business School Case Study about $1.3 billion Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union in St. Paul, Minn., which faced a dilemma when it learned that even though members utilized the CU's highly profitable indirect lending program, they really didn't like it and would "go elsewhere if there was somewhere else to go." When members feel like that, if there is an alternative in the marketplace, we could lose our financial stability as we lose those members to the competition.
We must also make our processes simple. Change them to bring the barriers down. Allow members to take the lead in managing this change and align our performance measures with our strategic objectives by:
- focusing on specific aspects of the service to be "excellent";
- influencing customer behaviors;
- making a way for employees to succeed;
- funding the mechanisms needed for service excellence and
- leading and enabling organization learning.
We should create a vision where we 'help members meet their basic financial needs and help them make the right decision for their future development. Your relationship with members will then give you the edge to sell products they need. Note that it is OK to be great at something and bad at something else. To differentiate my credit union, I need to provide a high quality service; gain members; make doing business with us convenient to them; show them I value their business; get to know their wants and needs; and build services around these to develop long-term relationships and member loyalty.
In addition to listening to lectures during the institute, the experience of holding discussions on the cases with the professors who actually developed them was in itself the most auspicious part of the program. There you were able to challenge their assumptions and make new assumptions to take away for implementation at your own credit union, whether it's located in the U.S., Canada or Trinidad and Tobago.
CUES member Shama Campo is general manager of Trinidad and Tobago Police Credit Union in Barataria, Trinidad, West Indies.
Read more about Advanced Leadership Institute sessions and case studies.
CUES members from the Caribbean were the inspiration for CUES International Leadership Academy.
