By Lisa Hochgraf
It's an age-old question: How do you do a lot of research if you don't have a lot of money?
At the new CUES School of Product and Channel Managementgoing on this week in Schaumburg, Ill., Terence Roche and Steve Williams told the 35 attendees that analytical thinking based on research is key to starting a product or channel development effort. Principals at CUES Supplier member and CUES strategic partner Cornerstone Advisors Inc., Roche and Williams said the research does not have to cost a fortune.
After presenting a considerable amount of research into financial industry trends, Roche said, "We didn't pay for any of this stuff. We have a kid back in the office and we say 'Go find out about mobile' and he comes back with 100 slides."
Roche suggested that credit unions can take research that's freely available and then think about it in terms of their particular situations by asking the question "How does this affect our credit union?"
"Answer with two bullets," he advised. "It's an effective way to continue the conversation" about product and channel management at your credit union.
Williams and Roche asked participants in the school to pretend they were executives of the fictitious "Vortex Credit Union," a $500 million state-chartered CU in the Atlanta metro area, originally chartered to serve a single select employee group. Vortex CU has 8 branches, a .70bp return on assets and deliquencies of 1.15 percent, trending down.
How would you suggest Vortex CU respond to the following industry trends, all culled from free Internet research? How should your own CU respond?
Trend 1: Women are the financial decision-makers in a majority of households.
Trend 2: Consumers feel they need more help managing their monthly budgets.
Trend 3: Consumers are worried about existing home values, but think it's a good time to buy a house.
Trend 4: Older consumers are concerned about retirement, but scared of stock investing.
Trend 5: Gen Y has high usage of both online chat and Web cams for communicating.
Remember, keep it to two bullets. Hope you'll share your two responses to at least one of the trends in the comments.
Lisa Hochgraf is a CUES editor.
