By Erin Templer
I attended CUES School of Applied Strategic Management in Chicago last week, and listened to John Oliver, Laurel Management Systems, Inc., present. If you’ve attended this program before, you know the first day-and-a-half (well, really the entire program) is intense.
In the first portion of the school, Oliver discusses asset/liability management as a set-up for a computer-based simulation, Strategic Management of Financial Institutions, during which the class breaks off into teams and practices running a financial institution. As Oliver was going over ALM, he said several things that struck me.
One of the topics he covered was something many credit unions, and several other industries for that matter, have been concerned with for quite a while. It’s the issue of relevancy. With members aging right along with the institutions, how do credit unions stay relevant?
The old “We do it this way because that’s the way we’ve always done it” doesn’t work anymore. And, not only that, but as Oliver put it, “We’re losing sight of the big picture. It’s not banks griping on credit unions and credit unions griping about banks. Other companies are coming in and, piece by piece, taking away our market share.”
It is important that credit unions have a strategy that moves beyond competing with those traditionally considered financial services providers. We are not just up against banks; we are contending with companies like Wal-Mart, AARP and AAA, which are all providing financial services as well. And this isn’t new. The financial industry has been shifting in this direction for years, but the movement’s strategy still needs to shift with it.
Oliver challenged the attendees to proactively manage change, instead of reacting to it. He said, “If we’ve got greater and greater irrelevance thrust upon us, we need strategic change. We need to understand what our members need, and become driven by our marketplace.”
He asked everyone to think about what their credit union does well. Do you have an outstanding member service plan in place you could create a template for and sell? Perhaps you’ve developed software that others would be interested in. Think outside the box and, perhaps most importantly, listen to the market’s needs.
Oliver will also be speaking at CEO/Executive Team Network this November.
Erin Templer is CUES' marketing coordinator.
