DENVER–It was the credit union version of Shark Tank here when nine teams of CU executives came together and pitched new but tested prototypes for a product or service, with a goal of then getting credit unions to invest.
Nine teams that are part of Filene’s i3 program found a large and responsive audience for those prototype ideas in a presentation during the World CU Conference and America’s CU Conference here. The ideas ranged from apps aimed at teens to a program to protect seniors with considerably more assets.
Prior to the teams making their presentations, Andrew Downin, Innovation Director at Filene, polled his audience for how many were tired of hearing the word “innovation.” With many hands raised, Downin noted that at the ACUC/WOCCU event there were 15 hours of content alone around innovation and disruption and change.
“I would say that thinking and talking for 90 minutes isn’t enough,” said Downin. “It’s not going to save one of your members $1. It isn’t going to make an operational process any easier. Thinking doesn’t change the industry. Putting new ideas into practice is where we make real change.”
Below are the nine prototypes that were presented. For the “Problem Addressed” and the “Solution Proposed” below, text was drawn from the i3 section of Filene.org.
Driving More ROI From Conference Expenses
i3 Team Name: Goonies
Team Members: Jason Deitz, Steve Fukomoto, Rob Lefowicz, and Matt Vance
Project: Hindsight.
Problem Addressed: Through our research and experiences, we have proven that credit unions are not leveraging the conferences attended into real value in return on investment and knowledge transfer.
Solution Proposed: Hindsight is the first solution that maximizes the value of conferences while facilitating knowledge transfer throughout your credit union
A spokesperson for the team said that credit unions spend an estimated $340-million sending representatives to conferences and training, but there is no return for anyone other than those in attendance at such meetings.
Hindsight is designed to “help credit unions save on conference expenses, share notes, and search notes.”
“We surveyed CUs and none tracked ROI of cost on sending their execs to conferences. 92% of execs said they would be interested in a solution that improved the transfer of knowledge to workers back home,” the spokesperson said. “Instead of you taking copious notes, this drives you to focus on the most relevant content, which we call ‘Aha’ moments. It leverages the most important resource: you. Ask yourself how could these ideas impact my credit union, what should my research further.”
Hindsight’s model calls for a searchable database and a dashboard showing showing sessions attended along with the ideas, and corresponding cost information, and even makes suggestions on what to attend in the future.
Research indicated many would pay an annual subscription for Hindsight, so the team is proposing a “freemium” model.
All Those Important Documents in One Place
i3 Team Name: LikeAGirl
Team Members: Laurie Butz, Ericka Gorman, Brooke Rogers, and Melina Young
Project: Life Binder
Problem Addressed: A study by Consumer Reports found that there is currently over $1 billion in life insurance benefits waiting to be claimed. The U.S. Federal government indicates that it holds over $17 billion in unredeemed savings bonds, IRS refunds, retirement and social security checks. That doesn’t even include unclaimed property or personal financial accounts.
Solution Proposed: The solution is a website (and eventually an app), called Life Binder, which allows any consumer to manage and maintain life’s important financial, legal, medical information (and more) in one place to ensure that critical information is not lost during any life event or transition. We truly believe that this offers peace of mind found from the knowledge that your family and finances are secure and will be available if and when needed, team members said.
“How many of you think you will have to take care of parents? That your kids will have to take care of you?,” asked a team spokesperson. “What if something happened to you on your way home? Life Binder is here to help. Reality is life comes with a lot of paperwork. Our solution helps you to put it in one safe app where you can store all that information. It also helps you to have conversations with family. But it’s more than that: it also helps to walk you through planning for life events.”
Life Binder includes checklists around certain life events for the documents that will be needed and that need to be retained. The team is proposing that users will be able to share access to Life Binder with certain people or outside parties. Research around the idea found three-quarters of users saying it would reduce their stress around finances.
What’s the value to the credit union? “You can strategically offer your CU’s stickiest products from within the app,” said a spokesperson. “Life events can be scary, and if you’re there for your members life events, they will remember it later. It’s a channel to reach current and potential members.”
Credit unions can get a look at the project at www.Lifebinder.horsetailtech.com.
Turning Informal Financial Relationships Into Credit History
i3 Team Name: 3 Amigos
Team Members: Aaron Palmer, Jennifer Sider, Jennifer Wolfe
Project: Emerge Financial
Problem Addressed: Informal lending relationships allow borrowers the opportunity to meet their immediate financial needs; however they carry a tremendous amount of risk of re-payment for the lender. Additionally, the borrower receives no credit for their payment history, eliminating the ability to leverage these relationships in building a positive credit history.
Solution Proposed: A customized website that tracks informal financial relationships and formalizes payments, ensuring accountability for payments while simultaneously building a credit history.
A team spokesperson said that 60% of all young adults receive some sort of financial support from their parents, and that 45-million Americans have no credit score. The team developed Emerge Financial as a means of formalizing the informal lending/payment arrangements many young people have (such as payments to parents) and seeks to ensure those positive payment streams are recognized by credit unions to help build credit.
The app developed by the team documents rental agreements, sale of a vehicle, or borrowing cash—and repayment. It also allows the user to access educational materials on how to build credit and steps to take for a first car loan or mortgage. The way it works is that two parties can formalize their agreement/contract. Each month party logs into account and makes payment. Users are able to view their current credit score and helpful hints that will allow them to continue to improve it. The credit union monitors that info and can take steps such as a first credit card.
“You can transfer the thin credit file member into a profitable future member,” a team spokesperson said.
The team acknowledged one roadblock will be in working with the Bureaus to accept.
Slaying the Student Debt Dragon
i3 Team Name: Trabian
Team Members: Rachel Langtry, Rebekah Monroe, Evelyn Royer, and Matthew Schewe
Project: Debt Dragon.
Problem Addressed: The problem of student loan debt puzzles many in the financial world and burdens millions of Americans each year. The amount of student loan debt continues to skyrocket, surpassing all other forms of debt outside of mortgages, even credit card debt.
Solution Proposed: Debt Dragon is unique because it speaks right to students and breaks down each debt factor in ways they will understand. Each decision demonstrates in dollars and cents how even the little things can affect their final debt load.
The i3 team offered some sobering statistics (and personal delusions) around student loans, including people who have more than $100,000 in debt. Seven-in-10 college graduates depart school with some sort of debt; the average is $30,000. Seventy-seven percent of those with student debt regret not having planned better. Troubling, 50% aren’t sure how they borrowed, and 28% didn’t realize they even had loans.
The team’s app can help “slay the debt dragon,” providing borrowers and potential borrowers with information on their own debt, as well as the ability to calculate various options before taking on more debt. It also “gives guidance on maybe changing course.
In a test of more than 100 students who reviewed Debt Dragon, 67% said it would impact their future college decisions.
The team is now seeking 20 CUs with which to partner on the app.
For more information: www.debtdragon.net
The Secret To Driving New Member Growth: 'Prepaid'
i3 Team Name: Fouri3
Project: Advocard
Team Members: Kathi Goodell, Christopher Danvers, Taylor Murray, Lamar Heyward
Problem Addressed: Two-out-of-every three American consumers are not credit union members. Why? Many are unaware of credit unions and their potential benefits.
Solution Proposed: Advocard is the first general purpose reloadable (GPR) prepaid card to offer consumers easy access to their money and free membership to credit unions nationwide.
According to the team behind Advocard, the answer to getting the CU value proposition in front of more people lies in one word: “Prepaid.”
To that end, the team worked with 10 credit unions in piloting a prepaid card called Advocard. The card has no fees, is easy to load with value, and can be sold in retail stores nationally. Participating credit unions would offer $100 to any person who converts the prepaid card into a checking account.
How To Get Workers More Engaged
i3 Team Name: Bond, Common Bond
Team Members: Mark Hamid, Jeremy Hayes, Chad LaFlash, Tammy Williams
Project: CoVo
Problem Addressed: Credit Unions are shrinking in numbers but growing in complexity. Top-performing organizations understand that employee engagement drives success. An engaged workforce delivers 43% more productivity, 23% more revenue, and 87% improvement in retention. How might we help CU employees, especially Millennials, feel empowered to create their own opportunities and make a difference in their workplace or their broader industry community?
Solution Proposed: CoVo is an online platform that gives credit union employees a voice to promote their passions and their own development, in order to help credit unions of all sizes thrive in today’s market. CoVo is a customizable tool inspired by the LinkedIn experience.
CoVo connects employees and organizations by empowering employees to use their voice, and giving management a methodology to measure employee engagement and impacts.
“Millennials in 2025 will be 75% of the workplace,” said a team spokesperson. “Most are passionate about cooperatives. However, the number of CUs declines 3% annually. By 2032, there will be 3,300 fewer credit unions.”
Employee engagement gets lost as organizations get larger, noted the team. Its goal is to find a way to help CU employees, especially Millennials, feel empowered to create their own opportunities in the workplace. CoVo is designed to be an online platform that helps get employees engaged. It includes room for self-expression and for individuals to share their brand in their own voice. The team sees the app as a means to share career paths.
“ Attracting talented employees is hard and expensive,” the team noted. “Development and training are very important. Employees who come and stay with the credit union do so due to culture.”
The team is now looking for three-to-four credit unions to pilot CoVo.
Helping Consumers 'D-Cipher' Complex Financial Jargon
i3 Team Name: D-Cipher
Team Members: Scott Coe, Bret Davis, Larry Fiory, Suzanne Weinstein
Team Project: D-Cipher
Problem Addressed: Consumers feel a lack of trust with financial institutions – including credit unions – because of all the “fine print” in disclosures coupled with the seeming mountain of disclosures and other documents. What are they hiding in all this paperwork?
Solution Proposed: A managed website which credit unions can subscribe to and link to their own CU websites. Its mission is to take the devil out of the details by providing simple, common sense explanations that tell you what’s important in the fine print, not just what’s compliant, in order to build loyalty and strengthen trust.
“We have a problem and it’s clear and simple,” said a team spokesperson. “We are neither clear no simple. People look at financial institutions as arrogant, deceitful, greedy and untrustworthy. We need to be honest, modest, kind, and in the end, transparent.”
The mission of D-Cipher, the team said during its presentation, is to take the devil out of the details to tell what’s important in the fine print, not just what’s compliant. To that end, D-Cipher helps consumers decipher the language used in many financial products and agreements. For instance, a user reviewing information online could roll a mouse over a certain confusing word or phrase and get a definition.
“Certain terms are highlighted and pop-up balloon explaining what the term means,” said a team spokesperson.
Does it affect a problem today? “Based on results from test group there is a definite need for what D-Cipher does,” said the spokesperson. “One message came through very clearly: Simple has to be simple. And we have some work to do to get there. We need to take our content to a whole new level in clear and simple.”
Helping Youth to Achieve & Track Financial Goals
i3 Team Name: Chasing Shade
Team Members: Brett Wooden, Jennifer Meyers, Jason Lindstrom, Keon Conerly
Team Project: Tender
Problem Addressed: In today’s electronic world, the adults of tomorrow are growing increasingly disconnected from their money and their finance, but more connected to popular apps like Twitter, Tinder, Snapchat, and Pinterest. It is our job as adults and educators, to give tomorrow’s leaders the tools they need to be successful with their personal finances.
Solution Proposed: Our solution is a fun, interactive financial technology tool; accessible through the channels (i.e. smartphones, tablets, and desktop) teenagers are currently using and which mirrors the online experience they are already familiar with.
The team told the CUNA/WOCCU meeting it was seeking to create an innovative and fun financial app to track and achieve financial goals.
“We found there is a disconnect between teenagers and budgeting,” a team spokesperson said. “Through technology we plan to minimize that gap.”
Tender is based on what the team called a four-legged stool: the teens who are the end-users, parents, schools, and credit unions. It works this way: Schools and parents create various chores and goals and then sign off on whether those goals have been met.
“Our survey found strong need for structured solution that would efficiently pay allowance, track spending habits, and reward for good spending,” said the spokesperson. “Parents see benefits from budgeting and tracking; credit unions see benefits in building loyalty and in enhancing overall member benefit offerings.”
A 'Guardian' For a Lifetime of Financial Savings
i3 Team Name: TrueNorth.
Team Members: Douglas Ebner, Serese Selanders, Andy Sulentic
Project Name: Guardian
Problem Addressed: How might credit unions provide a personalized service for families that will help protect their lifetime savings, while at the same time grow membership and retain intergenerational assets?
Solution Proposed: Guardian will alleviate stress by providing a personalized “one-stop” solution for the senior and loved ones to exchange information and collaborate in a private, secure manner. Guardian provides information at their fingertips, protects a lifetime of savings and ensures everyone peace of mind.
“This is about protecting a lifetime of savings,” said a spokesperson. “When one member of a two-person household passes away, there are a lot of new challenges. Surviving spouses are dealing with grief, which makes it harder to deal with finances, and makes them targets of fraud. And often children don’t know what to do.”
The team said an estimated $30-trillion is expected to transfer hands via inheritances during the near future.
“We have estate services, but we don’t have plans for widows or widowers, or those who inherit the assets,” said the spokesperson.
Guardian addresses the challenges faced by seniors, the team said. It is not just a place to protect a lifetime of savings, it’s a place to find information and achieve peach of mind.
“For the credit union, Guardian attracts family, generates non-interest revenue, maintains funds, and is opportunity to target non-members,” the team spokesperson said.
Two versions of Guardian are being proposed: a free version, and a premium version at $4.99 a month that would aggregate all of an individual’s financial account, and also provide a virtual safe deposit box and a password keeper.
The primary purchaser of Guardian isn’t the adult, but the adult child, according to the team, which said a survey of 245 people found that 55% said they would likely use Guardian.