Why financial wellbeing is critical to member success

In a world of self-serving member experience metrics, supporting a member’s financial wellbeing is all about them, which is truly the pinnacle of member service.

What do members really want? Simply put, they want their credit union to support their financial wellbeing.

Members who agree that their credit union looks out for their financial wellbeing are three times more likely to be engaged. And, engaged members are 39% more likely to sign up for new services, 49% more likely to increase balances, and 32% more likely to seek out their credit union first for financial advice.

But, often, credit union leaders conflate financial health with financial wellbeing. These are not the same. Financial health is about money; financial wellbeing is about a person’s emotional relationship with that money. If you are making decisions for your credit union based on an inaccurate premise of financial health and trying instead to differentiate based on friendly service, you’re missing the opportunity to serve members as fully as you could be and will lose members to your banking brethren.

Gallup research has found that financial wellbeing does tend to get better with higher income. That might not be surprising; however, our research has also found that is not always the case. It is common that people have high financial health and low financial wellbeing — and vice versa. For example, of those earning more than $120,000 per year, 43% are struggling or suffering in their financial wellbeing. As such, there are opportunities across all socioeconomic groups to improve financial wellbeing.

 

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