Attention CUs: You’re About to Lose Your Most Loyal Member…Me!
by: Roger Conant, CUTweetTrack
We’ll probably not me. Because credit unions are my vocation, I’ll never leave.
But my friends might. And the credit union boomer members are.
Let me explain.
I’m at the age where many members are starting to get the idea that my credit union is beginning to abandon me. It’s not just my opinion. That fact was reinforced by extensive research from CUNA MUTUAL several years ago titled Boomers or Bust…A Generation You Can’t Afford To Lose.
Several weeks ago I had arrived at the stage where I was ready to make a decision about filing for social security benefits. My wife is not far behind me.
It’s hard to miss all of the buzz these days about retirees taking a new look at social security. Research shows that there is a lot more money to receive if you file right.
At that point, I thought it might be a good idea to check with my credit union to see if they could provide some “trusted advice”. That’s what my credit union would want me to do…right?
But I didn’t want/need advice about accumulating assets. Instead, I needed to begin to strategize my retirement income. And I wanted to begin with my social security. I think more and more member retirees in my position will be taking a much closer look at social security.
So I started my research with my credit union website. Lots of great information there, but mostly geared to lending. When I did find information about retirement, it was combined with investing. There was plenty about planning for retirement…but little about taking it.
The bottom line is, after taking a deep dive into my credit union website, I got frustrated. The info and resources provided were geared to Gen Y, lending and investing (accumulation). (and this is not a small credit union…assets are over 500 million)
So I then turned to a web resource I’m pretty sure my credit union doesn’t want me to use. And by placing the words “social security” and “filing” in the search engine, that took me to an article from Forbes titled Gain $152,000 by Smart Filing for Social Security.
And that led me to many third party websites (some FREE) that instructed me on how to file to get my maximum benefits.
Now why couldn’t my credit union have provided that information-education? They could have!
Now back to the research from CUNA Mutual. That research (almost 3 years ago) dramatically warned CUs that they were about to lose a critical mass of boomers if they didn’t start positioned themselves as a retirement resource.
It wouldn’t be hard. A great start (with little investment) would be to link to some really current information about social security. My research revealed that retirees are leaving a lot of money on the table by filing without the right strategy.
Wouldn’t credit unions look good if they were the ones educating members like me about that?
Roger Conant has been an advocate for credit unions since his first job in the marketing department of a Houston based CUSO several years ago. He started one of the first efforts to track activity of credit unions on Twitter with @CUTweetTrack. He also has participated in national sales efforts (exclusively for credit unions) for compliance software and TurboTax. www.cutweettrack.com
