Does your credit union have a back room that conjures images of haunted houses, lined with old squeaky file cabinets filled with paper documents? Is it the kind of room employees are afraid to visit, with cobwebs and the foulest stench in the air - the funk of 40,000 years? At this stage in the digital banking era, these cabinets are no thriller and should be set aside for your Halloween fun-fest. It’s time to significantly cut back on your paper reliance and join the modern world. Digitizing the lending process, as well as your other operational processes, can create efficiencies for both your members and your credit union.

Many credit union executives use their bottom line profitability as the primary measure of their success. Other credit union boards solely focus on the financial performance of a given quarter or year as it compares against the prior term's figures. By putting the focus of your CU's success on past results, you lose the advantage of being a forward thinker; You ignore how well your key performance indicators (KPI's) measure against the results of credit unions in your asset group. Approaching your performance measurement this way is known as “benchmarking”.

There has been a great deal of discussion lately on the struggles of smaller to medium-sized credit unions. They face many challenges to remain on par with their peers, while not breaking the bank. However, the other side of the coin is the strength of the industry as a whole. Though 70% of the credit union population is composed of smaller credit unions, here are some numbers that illustrate basic performance facts of today's credit union industry:

Many Small credit unions are fighting an uphill battle to compete in the financial marketplace and to gain a better foothold. With recent numbers illustrating their decline in membership, assets and loan growth, it seems small credit unions have a blurry future. However, with an estimated 70% (4000/5684) of total operational credit unions classified as small (having under $100M in assets,) they represent a huge portion of the industry, and their struggles shouldn’t be easily dismissed.