Anthony Demangone of NAFCU: The 7 Deadly Questions

Anthony Demangone is the Director of Regulatory Compliance at NAFCU. You can read his thoughts on regulation, compliance, NAFCU and CUs at large over at the NAFCU Compliance Blog, and you can regularly hear him talk about current issues in credit unions over at...well, the Current Issues in Credit Unions podcast over at That Credit Union Blog. 

Recently, Anthony wrote an interesting article for NAFCU's magazine, The Federal Credit Union. I want every one of our regular readers to pop over to Anthony's blog and read the article in full. It's great food for thought and comes with this disclaimer: 

Editor's note: This has been a tough stretch for credit union compliance officers. Regulation Z, HVCC, the CARD Act, the FACT Act, Truth in Savings, Regulation E, MDIA, and HOEPA have all ganged up to throw myriads of new requirements at credit unions. If you want to get the most out of your compliance officers and preserve their sanity, please pass this article around to your non-compliance staff.

Please, give the article a read and let Anthony know what you think. We'll take your comments, too, if you prefer. 

Compliance officers get questions.  That is a fact of life.  We get big questions and small ones.  Complicated questions, and simple ones.  Some questions, though, give us heartburn.  These questions cause us to close our door and bang our head against the wall.  

In a perfect world, these questions wouldn’t exist. The world, however, is not perfect.  We know that.  All compliance officers want is to hold these questions to a minimum.

The following list shows what to avoid when asking a compliance officer a question.  Whenever possible.  When that is not possible, go ahead and ask. But come bearing gifts.  Or antacid.

1. "I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend…" questions.  These questions often start with the phrase, “I was at a conference, and I heard that we have to do (insert issue).”  Ah, the wild goose chase.  Compliance officers do appreciate it when other credit union employees come to them with new compliance information...

2. Last-minute contract reviews. Often, these questions look like the following: Can you look at this contract?  We need to have it signed today, and we want to make sure that everything is OK...

3. Oversimplifying questions.  Some questions might seem simple, such as this one: What disclosures do we need to have on this (insert document, such as periodic statement, late notice, etc.)? That question is not simple.  It is fairly complicated. What makes this question so troublesome is that the answer turns on many, many variables...

4. Conference call questions.  (The phone rings in a compliance officer’s office.)  Hello. We’re in the middle of a meeting, and a question has come up regarding the Home Valuation Code of Conduct.  Can we do (insert question)? Don’t worry…we’ll stay on the line and wait for your answer...

5. Open-ended questions. These questions might look like this one: What do we need to know about this (insert subject)?...

6. The “onion” question.  I call this type of question the onion, because it involves layers.  A compliance officer gets a question, and they answer it.  But then the person comes back with additional details...

7. The “sneaky” question.  Often, credit union employees have disagreements concerning whether some action is permissible.  Sometimes, one of the employees involved in the disagreement will try to use a compliance offer to buttress his or her argument...

Click here to visit the NAFCU Compliance Blog and read the full article!

One Spot, One Thought

Most think that the opportunity for credit unions to grow market share and deepen member relationships has never been better. After all, banks and other financial entities (i.e., CIT) have been falling down for over a year now. 

Shari Storm - Chief Marketing Officer for Verity Credit Union, blogger and author of the book Motherhood is the New MBA - is a fan of making the message simple, clear, and focused. We were very excited to have her as this week's guest author, and we think her advice is very sound. 

You fill your direct mail pieces with every offer available. You mail them twice a month. Your numbers barely shift. What gives? Maybe there is such a thing as "too much to choose from".  

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Throughout my 15 year marketing career, I have had some sort of variation on this conversation at least one million times.

Me (or my team): "Our plan is to tell our checking account holders about our VISA card."

Someone else: "Why don’t we tell them about our car loans and mortgages too?" 

Someone else: "We should send them a menu of products we offer so they can choose from all 64. Who knows what they need right now?"

You can swap out the target and swap out the product, but the suggestion is always same – send as much information as possible. The more words, the better. 

Most marketers know that the opposite is true. There is an old adage, "If you tell them three things, you’ve told them nothing". Or, like Currency Marketing said when we were producing a radio commercial with them, "One spot, one thought". 

Guest Author Robbie Wright: BarCampBank

Robbie Wright is the Vice President of the Credit Union Division for Nexcentri, a CUSO of Tampa Bay Federal Credit Union. Robbie is also one of the more prolific bloggers in the "CU bloggosphere", writing the blog The Life and Times of a Credit Union Employee. His insights on being in the employ of a CU and in the CU industry are honest and insightful, with a good eye for observation. His discussion in comments is usually lively, adding more background to the story as more CU professionals weigh in. Also an authority on "BarCamp", we've asked Robbie to walk our readers through the basics of BarCampBank Vegas, coming up at the end of April/Start of may. Robbie can be reached at robbie@nexcentri.com. 

Innovation.  Social media.  Core competencies.  All over-used buzzwords that seem to get discussed at every conference by some talking head that's paid to be there and has done the same dog and pony show for a year and a half.  Well, BarCampBank is here to change that.  Commonly referred to as the "un-conference", BarCamps have been around for a number of years and were initially popularized in Silicon Valley.  As Wikipedia puts it, "BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences - open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants."

Guest Author Melina Young: Get a Coffee – Save $300 Million

Melina Young is an owner and president of Credit Union Strategic Planning. Her research has been featured internationally and most recently at a symposium in India. She is a regular guest lecturer at the University of Washington. Melina is the project lead for one of the fastest growing small credit unions in the world. She bats 1000 at grant writing, securing six figures annually for credit unions. Of the five grants she authored in 2008, all have received funding.

Melina is also one of the bright minds behind the American Debt Relief challenge, the widget of which recently debuted at the top of CUJournal.com. To give you more information, we asked Melina to be a guest author and walk you through the ADR - how it came to be, who's behind it and where she and her group hope to go.  

Get a Coffee – Save $300 Million

"You won't believe the 4-hour coffee conversation I just had," my business partner Jamie Chase said to me a few months ago. "We are going to help credit unions grow their net revenue while saving consumers $300 million." Intrigued? So was I...

Over that coffee our friend Scott Butterfield described a balance transfer program to Jamie which saved the average family $200 a month. That's a table full of groceries or a car payment for most families. "Credit unions across the U.S. are running balance transfer programs," Jamie said excitedly. "What if we measured the national savings?"

Our First Guest Author: Matt Davis, The Credit Union Warrior, talks Skip-A-Pay

Matt Davis (a.k.a, "The Credit Union Warrior") is the Public Relations Director at Members CU. He's also one of the biggest "CU-lebrities" around, thanks to his blog (http://creditunionwarrior.blogspot.com) and ambitious projects like the What Are You Saving For? website (http://www.whatareyousavingfor.com), which is helping to promote a save-minded member by offering prizes for folks who are doing a good job of hanging on to their money. 

Matt's dedication to the credit union ideal and fresh, fun writing style have made him a hit with other cu innovators and regular folks alike. Which is why we at the CU Soapbox were thrilled to have him as our first guest author. So, without further ado...

Members Credit Union’s David to ING’s Goliath: Holiday Skip-A-Pay

 

ING Direct just announced (click here for their press release) that they forgave $861,513 in January mortgage payments for 500 lucky homeowners. For the winners it is hard to imagine a nicer way to start your 2009. For the losers…well, you are just out of luck. 

Enter, $200 million Members Credit Union (Winston-Salem, NC). MCU offered a fee-free "Holiday Skip-a-Pay" to all members for any non-mortgage loan in November or December. The response? 4,089 loan agreements, accounting for $876,772 in member payment obligations, were amended. This accounted for 20.4% of the credit union’s outstanding loans, and an equal ratio of monthly loan payment cash flow. 

MCU launched the program on their CEO’s blog, jackbraswell.com for zero direct marketing cost. Comments such as "Thanks for caring about my family!!!" and "This is a blessing from God" will forever serve as public testimony on the blog. Whether members took MCU up on the offer or not, they will not forget the sentiment: when times are tough, your credit union is here to help. 

What is your credit union doing to outshine the big (in this case HUGE) banks? What can you do to make members’ lives during this trying economic time a little better? How are you making your program accessible for all members?