President's Message

Imitation, as they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Try telling that to Margaret and Lucy, my older daughters, when their little brother Jack starts copying everything they do. Add in a little remote school and some quarantine, and... let’s just say I have some fun stories to share with my friends.

Credit unions have good reason to be flattered. One year ago tomorrow, August 19, 2019, the Business Roundtable published Principles of Corporate Governance that overturned a 22 year old policy that defined maximizing shareholder value as the core corporate purpose. In its place, the Roundtable adopted a new statement that companies should serve not only their shareholders, but also deliver value to their customers, employees, suppliers, and their local communities. Sound familiar?

In the financial services sector, the largest of financial institutions have recently invested millions of dollars to redesign their digital and physical user experience in order to build deeper relationships with their customers. Some efforts are more successful than others, but it is clear that they realize that they need to grow more customer loyalty. Perhaps this is a defensive response to the massive market disruption caused by fintech, but it is the credit union that owns this space. Relationship banking is ours – and we need to protect it.

More locally, after the League’s use of the term “Financial First Responder” caught a little viral fire, we mounted a successful media campaign to celebrate credit unions and promote the credit union difference on a larger scale.  People noticed. Even CUNA President Jim Nussle used it on MSNBC. Now some banks and fintechs have started using the hashtag on social media. If we are to grow a larger and more loyal membership, it is time to speak louder. We must speak with one voice. We have always been Financial First Responders and we do not need a pandemic to communicate what makes us unique in the marketplace. 

So, we can be flattered that banks and fintechs, and all of corporate America like our special sauce enough to try to copy the recipe but—just like my daughters—we can scream about it and fight to keep our unique identities sacred.

As always, thank you for the opportunity to serve you another week,
Bruce 

P.S. Don’t forget to bank where you belong and visit cubelong.com where your money goes further.