Top 10 Strategic Planning Trends

As you create strategies and goals to guide your credit union into the future, consider how these 10 trends, from the 2013-2014 CUNA Environmental Scan, might alter the course you set:

1. Mobile payments are growing at a 68% annual growth rate—from $16 billion in 2010 to a projected $214 billion by 2015. It has been called the single greatest opportunity—and threat—for credit unions.

This is a new ballgame. Members used to come to credit unions for cash and credit union-branded checks or plastic cards.

But members won’t be coming to the branch for their mobile payment branded devices. Instead, mobile payments will come down to access, not devices.

The challenge will be to retain your members in a mobile-payments world.

2. Mobile banking. Consumers expect to be able to access a variety of financial products and services from their mobile devices with ease and reliability.

There will be an estimated two billion active smartphones worldwide by the end of 2013, according to Deloitte. Mobile banking has gone from cutting edge to mainstream faster than any other financial innovation.