ORLANDO—Robert Hackney kicked off CSCU’s 2017 Annual Meeting here by delivering a message to credit unions on the need to pay close attention to change, as well as to rely on the skills of payments experts to expand their portfolios.
With his tongue in check, the CSCU president, cited the “great American philosopher” and Yankee baseball great Yogi Berra, who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
“That’s really not a bad idea,” Hackney told attendees. “If you are going to be in the payments game you better be ready to adapt and change.”
But Hackney recognized that it may not be easy for all credit unions, outside of largest, to have all the resources to adjust to change and do the things necessary to keep the card portfolio growing.
“When it comes to resources for the smaller credit unions, the issue could be number of people, skill, and the budget to be able to do all you need to do today with payments,” Hackney said.
Hackney pointed to CSCU’s Optimize growth solution, an umbrella of services the company offers to its credit unions, giving them a detailed 12-month program to keep their card portfolio building.
“The one big thing that the large issuers do is regularly engage with their cardholders,” said Hackney. “With Optimize, we help you do that. We do things like help you with credit line management and activation and usage campaigns.”
Hackney said Optimize numbers tell the story.
Optimize performance numbers show that CUs that use the service outperform those CSCU credit unions that do not—including CUs that use the service have about 3.5 percentage points more active users than those credit unions that do not use the service, as well as portfolio revenue about ten percentage points greater.
“This is a no-brainer,” Hackney said.
In closing Hackney pointed to the fact that digital wallet usage today is flat, which CUToday.info recently reported. But he said that digital wallets remain critically important to credit unions to remain top of wallet, top of mind, and relevant with their cardholders. He encouraged credit unions to be in all the “pays.”
“You can’t afford not to be in them” said Hackney, noting that to drive digital wallet usage credit unions should pay attention to what e-wallet holders say will encourage more taps—rewards, greater convenience or a solution that solves a problem.”