BOULDER, Colo.—For Elevations Credit Union, becoming the first credit union to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award isn’t the real accomplishment. Instead, the accomplishments have come in the changes it had to make before it could even apply for the award.
Those changes, primarily in internal process improvement, may offer guidance to other credit unions seeking to grow walletshare among existing members, to improve operations, and to drive efficiencies.
Elevations is being profiled here as part of CUToday.info’s 2015 series “100 Million Members: Now What?,” which is examining how credit unions are dealing with success.
In the case of Elevations CU, the path to the nation's highest Presidential award for performance excellence, which started in 2008, has led to significant process improvements at the credit union that have produced impressive performance numbers even in the face of the recession. During the tough economic years and those that followed, through 2013 Elevations has dramatically improved membership penetration even while peers either faltered or remained flat.
At the heart of the Baldrige program is process excellence, which in the case of a credit union is manifested in turning new members into profitable members who contribute to the co-op—an issue with which many CUs continue to wrestle as they had new members. That, in turn, is reflected in Elevations CU’s solid capital growth.
Dennis Paul, VP of business and community development, talked with CUToday.info about what the process of meeting the criteria for the award has done for the $1.4-billion credit union. Saying it is difficult to quantify all that the Baldrige program has helped Elevations CU to accomplish, Paul emphasized that one overarching achievement has been to help it compete more effectively in the face of stiff competition.
“It is a jungle out there, and we just determined that the best thing for the credit union and our member-owners is to strive to be the very best we can be—and the rest will take care of itself,” Paul said.
Approach Pays Off
That philosophy has paid off. From 2004-2008, prior to the CU employing the Baldrige framework, membership growth was 1%. From 2009-2013, that number soared to 6%. In those same time periods, credit unions in Elevations’ peer group went from 3% membership growth to 1%.
More importantly, the credit union became more profitable, seeing capital growth skyrocket from 1% from 2004-2008, to 13% from 2009-13. In those same periods, peer group capital remained flat at 7% growth.
“For us, it’s about excellence, about developing the best possible products and services to improve the lives of our member-owners,” said Paul. “That has been our entire MO during the last six years.”
Looking at market share, ECU has one out of every two households in Boulder and one out of three in Boulder County, said Paul.
The credit union has not logged the hours it put into making all of the changes necessary to comply with the Baldrige standards, but Paul described the effort as “epic.” Every group within the organization received process excellence training, as new methods were put in place to ensure every process is documented, evaluated and improved. “That includes how we take money over the counter to how we accept and close loans,” said Paul. “Every process. We created flowcharts and have software to document our processes. It took a great deal of time and energy.”
Now, when Elevations deploys a new mortgage product or technology, for example, the installation goes through the same process management framework first, explained Paul. “We look at the business case—is this a product we should have in our portfolio? Is the demand there? What is the life expectancy of the product? What are its key attributes? We do this as opposed to just saying we need a gold card because everyone else has one.”
Vetting Every Idea
Paul emphasized that each new product concept or program is vetted. “We start with a good business case, build a functional business case, and then, if management decides to move forward, we deploy resources, including a project manager.”
It’s at that point, with a project manager in place, that Elevations moves into the project requirements phase, which catalogs what Elevations has to do to launch, and what is involved from an infrastructure and technology standpoint.
The Baldrige program, by design, requires organizations to dedicate years to process improvement. Organizations cannot be considered for the national honor until they have received a state award, which happened for Elevations in early 2014 when it received the Peak Award from Rocky Mountain Performance Excellence.
“Finally, after six years, we got the opportunity to apply for a national site visit from the Malcom Baldrige program,” said Paul. “We submitted our application for the national award last February.
The credit union learned it won the award in November, 2014, one of only four U.S. organizations to receive the honor this year—and the first credit union in the country to ever so so. It will accept the honor in April in Washington.
“When we heard the news we were stunned,” said Paul, who explained that winning on the first application is not common. “We were honored and humbled.”
Elevations is not promoting the honor outside of a page on its website and through limited press releases, saying it may eventually step up communications.
“I am not sure what the average member knows about the Baldrige award,” said Paul. “At the end of the day, as I said, it is about the commitment to excellence and success at the credit union with the end result being the improved lives of our members.”