Long-term growth is a priority for any credit union. Yet at the same time, many organizational leaders are not sure what components to consider when planning and executing a growth strategy.

A credit union can't continue to do what it's always done. In the modern world we live in: member expectations change all the time. This, coupled with increased competition, cause fluctuations in the financial industry on a regular basis. Therefore, for credit unions to succeed within this context, they need to remain efficient enough to pivot at a moment's notice.

When it comes to operational efficiency, credit unions have room for growth. According to a McKinsey & Company study, credit unions are repeatedly more inefficient when compared to similarly sized banks. The causes of this operational efficiency variance can range, but it almost always boils down to certain processes draining valuable resources. Ask yourself:

Digital transformation — when done right — can transform your credit union's ability to stand out in a crowded market while optimizing operations and improving the overall member experience. But when it's done wrong, the possibilities are endless — and not in a good way. For example, Hewlett Packard's digital transformation in 2004 was slated to cost $160 million. But because of several failures, it cost them nearly five times that amount.

In an age of two-day Amazon delivery, instant Google search, and personalized lending offers through Credit Karma, your members are no longer satisfied with a slow back-office lending process that takes days to weeks. Instead, credit unions must modernize their lending with a digital loan origination system and powerful analytics.

In addition to digital lending, another scalable technology has grown in popularity, especially in recent years. While credit unions both large and small were initially skeptical of automated decisioning, it is now being implemented at higher rates. The alternative to auto-decisioning, human review, was long-considered a more reliable form of decisioning by many credit unions. However, with increasing loan growth, credit unions have grown more comfortable with the idea of automation. The U.S lending portfolio has increased by 61.8% over the past five years, and last year, credit unions saw loan growth of 9.7%. Consumer loans are the fastest growing category, increasing 20.2% over the past year and 93.7% over the past five years. Due to this rapid growth in the consumer loan space, credit unions have been forced to reassess the efficiency of their lending process and many have taken the leap to adopt automated decisioning. For credit unions who are still on the fence, here are three factors to consider.