Prioritizing member service leads small CUs to success

As president/CEO of a small credit union, Lori Herrick said her credit union focuses on serving member needs. An that’s how Manchester Municipal FCU, Manchester, Conn., is able to run an in-house student loan program for the past decade and “never have a single charge-off, nor amazingly, have one of these loans reach even 30 days of delinquency,” she wrote in Credit Union Journal.

“Up until 2009, when we launched the program, we were turning away countless members who wanted to send their kids to college but didn’t know how to pay for it. We heard many stories from members who had student loans they’d been paying off for years without being able to make a dent in the principal. Or they’d been hit with fees. Or they were paying interest rates of 10% or more,” she wrote. “It broke my heart, and I knew we had to step in.

“The biggest concern, of course, was the risk. Anyone we consulted with on a potential program warned of that next big bubble, of the possibility of exposing the credit union to massive charge-offs,” Herrick added. “But we knew our members. We knew we could create a successful program.”

 

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