How to grow your credit union efficiently is a topic that has been discussed in the past - but at the same time, conditions within the larger market are constantly changing. You need to take the techniques that have historically worked well and match them up with the expectations of current and even future members. Only then will you be able to achieve the best possible rate of credit union growth, not just in 2023, but for years to come.
Reassessing Your Vendor Relationships
By far, one of the most important steps that you can take to achieve proper credit union growth in 2023 involves understanding the difference between traditional vendors and legitimate partners.
Vendors are great for offering assistance in certain areas. True partners are collaborators in every sense of the term. A vendor is someone who is focused on helping you solve a short-term problem. A partner is someone who can help you build the type of unique solution for members that they just won't be able to find anywhere else.
Both are valuable, but the latter is much more equipped to help your credit union meet its long-term growth goals than the former.
Collaboration is King
Along the same lines, you need to acknowledge that one of the major keys to your credit union's success is and will always be collaboration. The industry itself is changing all the time and while credit unions do mostly compete against one another, they still do so with a common goal in mind: strengthening the communities in which they operate.
This is why you need to look to not only similar organizations, but to community partners to deepen that sense of trust among all involved. The COVID-19 pandemic taught us this in an eloquent way when it suddenly became paramount that organizations work together to help achieve the greater good.
When credit unions come together to serve their communities, everybody wins. Considering that this is a large part of why a credit union exists in the first place, this is and will always be a good idea.
Play to Your Strengths
Finally, if you really want your credit union to achieve growth success, you need to acknowledge and play to the strengths that make you unique.
Part of this will require you to listen more closely than ever to your members. What are you doing that they like and that they can't live without, and where are your opportunities for improvement? Once you have this valuable feedback, you can double down on the former and get rid of the latter at your earliest opportunity.
Listen to people's pain points. Let them tell you what direction they want your credit union to go in. Without your members, you have nothing - therefore, it stands to reason that with your members, you have access to everything you need to continue to grow well into the future.
At FLEX we believe that achieving proper credit union growth is less the product of any one major move and is more about a series of smaller and more strategic ones. Check out our case study to learn how FLEX customer, Freedom Northwest Credit Union, more than tripled in size using internal efficiencies.
