by Ron Shevlin
Consider the two following pieces of news that crossed my desk yesterday:
- The December 2012ACSI Customer Satisfactionscores for financial services revealed that credit unions scored higher than banks (as a whole) for the fifth straight year. However, credit unions’ score dropped from 87 to 82, a 6% drop, from the previous year. This comes was after a seven point gain in 2011 over the 2010 score.
- NerdWalletanalyzed data published by the NCUA and found that half of all federally insured credit unions experienced an increase in membership from June 2011 to June 2012. According to the NCUA, credit union membership ranks grew by 2.1 million from October 2011 through September 2011.
My take:This raises some interesting questions. What caused the drop in credit unions’ satisfaction ratings in 2012? And, for that matter, what caused the huge jump in 2011? Why would membership ranks continue to grow in the face of declining satisfaction? Would membership have grown even faster if satisfaction levels had remained at its 2011 level?
I can come up with two competing schools of thought to explain what’s going on:
