By Frank J. Diekmann
It’s not yet the Night Before Christmas, but don’t think I can’t hear you. Or that I even blame you. So, go ahead. Go ahead and tell them. It’s OK. Tell the truth when that sweet cherub of a child or grandchild looks to you innocent yet fearful over a tear-inducing rumor heard during a pre-K Zoom class that Santa’s sleigh will be hijacked and the presents stolen. “Is it true? Is it true about the Grinch?”
You open your arms to the little angel and beckon the child to climb safely into your lap. What do you say? Of course you want to offer safety and comfort and reassurance. But…. But it’s also apparent the little one has heard the story wrong.
“No, no, the Grinch isn’t a green beast coming to take away Christmas,” you offer reassuringly as you pull the wee one tight. “Instead, let me tell you about this columnist who writes about credit unions…”
It’s OK, I get it.
In the most read column I’ve written this year, last week I asked credit unions if I was the only one worried about a trendline related to consumer satisfaction with credit unions (hint, if you didn’t read it: consumers are more satisfied with banks). And worse: This year marks the second year in a row consumers have favored the b-word!
The response from CU leaders to those findings? To quote that other Grinch, “Now you listen to me, young lady! Even if we’re horribly mangled, there’ll be no sad faces on Christmas.”
And yet as Christmas approaches, a bit more news that should mangle even more sad faces across Credit Union Land. As CUToday.info reported here, while every CU in Whoville was celebrating Q3 data from NCUA showing overall credit union membership and total loans were up, when you rip off the pretty wrapping you discover CUs in every asset category below $1 billion lost both members and loans in the year ending Sept. 30. Lostmembers and loans.
Sure, some could and will argue that nine-months of that one year included a pandemic, so that might explain the slower loans, yet CUs over $1 billion in assets grew both the membership and the lending volume over that same period.
To quote the Grinch and only the Grinch here, “What is that stench? It’s fantastic!”
For everyone else the response to that stench must be taking action even if you have to hold your nose.
New years are always full of resolutions, most of which don’t make it to Jan. 2. Whatever your personal resolutions may be, the credit union community must resolve to do something together about both the sliding satisfaction with members and the declining membership and loans (do you think the two just might just be related?) And that resolution will need to last far beyond the second day of the year; it must last for every day of every year credit unions want to be around to continue to serve their members.
It’s going to require cooperation, which I believe is what the Grinch was referring to when he announced, “It came without ribbons, it came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags.”
And it’s a gift credit unions already have.
Also in the Holiday Bag
Some other notes as year-end approaches and I empty out the Reporter’s Notebook:
It’s Not About the Income
Observed in a tweet by Ron Shevlin of Cornerstone Advisors: “I see many articles that mention how many people live paycheck to paycheck. One study says 78%. Others say 53% and 49%. Another study says one in 1 in 4 ppl who earn more than $150k live “p to p.” It’s time to stop using “living paycheck to paycheck” as proof of hard times.
A (Wise Use of) Space Odyssey
The meme of the year goes to this, at right, for the Photoshop job done by Andrews FCU.
Darwinism ‘Misinterpreted’
Gene Foley, the well-known and longtime leader of Harvard University Employees Credit Union who retired after 25 years as CEO, shared an observation as part of a CUToday.info Exit Interview on what might lie ahead for CUs that bears a re-read.
When asked, “What is your view on the future of credit unions, if there is to be one?,” Foley responded: “First, this global pandemic has cut deeply across every artery in the economy, credit unions included. The next few years will be seminal in defining the industry’s future. I remember reading that there is a common misinterpretation of ‘Social Darwinism.’ The theory is not survival of the fittest, but rather survival of the species most adaptive to changes in the environment. I believe this holds true for our credit union model as well. Credit unions will need to be unique and meaningful in the marketplace in order to thrive.”
You can find the full interview here.
An F Minus?
Earlier this year, under the headline, “Where Credit Unions Deserve a Big Red ‘F,” I wrote here about the appalling state of most credit union communications to the media and other audiences. That was back at the beginning of the year, so, it only stands to reason CUs have gotten their communication acts together since then, right? Umm, not so much. Or as many CUs might say, “Knot sew mulch.”
Case in point is a press release from a Kentucky credit union in which the announcement it was changing its name didn’t appear until 273 words and three paragraphs into the release (and the first paragraph should have been the last, as it was all about the CU’s history).
As I wrote then and will repeat here: many media outlets are strained until almost breaking for resources and time—get to the point! Otherwise, your announcement is also likely to be history by an editor or reporter hitting the delete key.
And since I started out all Grinchy, let me conclude in the spirit of his greenness: this same release may have set a new sub-standard for grammatical and punctuation errors, often alternating, for instance, on placing the comma inside quote marks and then outside (for the record, 99% of the time, the punctuation goes inside the quote marks) and further frequently changing tenses.
It’s all enough to drive an editor to borrow a page out of the Grinch’s calendar: “4:00, wallow in self-pity. 4:30, stare into the abyss. 5:00, solve world hunger, tell no one. 5:30, jazzercize; 6:30, dinner with me. I can’t cancel that again. 7:00, wrestle with my self-loathing. I’m booked. Of course, if I bump the loathing to 9, I could still be done in time to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling and slip slowly into madness.”
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief of CUToday.info and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info. Mr. Diekmann is also author of the new book, ‘501 Name Tags: Everything You Need to Know About Business Can be Learned at a Conference & Forgotten in the Trade Show.” For info: www.501nametags.com.