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2 quick thoughts on Vantage CU and their twitter banking

2009-09-29T03:41:00Z

Our credit union friends at Vantage have launched a first of its kind mobile banking platform leveraging Twitter. Two quick thoughts on their innovative efforts:

1. Controlling your own destiny is an innovation enabler. As Tim McAlpine from Currency Marketing says better than I can – lay claim to being first at something can be a viable business strategy or at least an important component of a successful strategy. I think the first mover advantage depends on the scenario and I am not using this space to argue about the pros and cons of first mover advantage. I am not looking for a debate on that topic. What I do want to proclaim is that controlling your own destiny instead of depending on a third party can be a huge innovation enabler. Vantage CU built their Twitter mobile application off of their own internet banking source code that they control. It helped them jump to the head of the class and get to market first. If you don’t have this control you are often times at the mercy of a third party who has many customers who want to be first and you often times have numerous fast followers.

2. No critics = lame idea. I was trading messages with my friends at Vantage CU this evening and they were sharing they have had both positive feedback to their launch and their share of critics. I reminded them that a healthy dose of criticism likely means they are on to something special. Another equation for this point is: critics = I might just have something special and if I don’t, life is just too short not to try.

Bottomline: Kudos to Vantage CU for having the courage to try and the stewardship to improve the access their members have to their credit union.

A FORUM Solutions Birthday

2009-09-22T16:22:00Z

When a FORUM Solutions teammate celebrates a noteworthy birthday, we do our best to let her know how much she is appreciated. Yesterday, we celebrated one such birthday with Amy, and we pulled off what some deem the best stunt yet. A few co-workers spent several hours on their Sunday afternoon relocating her desk to the atrium.

She was a great sport, and even humored us by working in the new locale for a while:

in memory of a credit union friend

2009-09-14T20:00:00Z

On Friday, Indiana credit unions lost a dear friend in Millie Cox . Millie was a credit union evangelist for the Indiana Credit Union League for 26 years. She was a constant credit union advocate both in Washington D.C. and Indianapolis and her efforts directly contributed to advancing the progress of credit unions here in the Hoosier state. I appreciate all she did for credit unions.

FNN:15 | leadership tidbit

2009-08-28T11:57:00Z

This morning I will be making a guest appearance along with my teammates Jenny and Jeff on FNN:15. FNN:15 is a webcast hosted here at FORUM Credit Union by our master of training, Andy Janning. The 15 minute webcast takes place every other Friday morning (on paydays) and is available to all credit union employees. The webcasts cover a variety of topics. Today’s topic – leadership. I am to share a success and a failure related to leadership from my experience at the credit union. I have plenty to share, especially the failures, but this is one topic that I try to avoid – not the failures, but leadership. Two topics that I try to avoid speaking about lately – leadership and social media. Why? Because there are no easy answers, no right or wrong answers, and there are so many voices already talking about these topics what else do I have to add? Seriously, search for leadership or social media on Amazon and you will get a ton of hits.

Keep in mind we only have 15 minutes so I am thinking with bumper time at the beginning and end that leaves us with 11 minutes. Divided by three and you get why I don’t like my chances of being able to clearly articulate my leadership tidbit. Thus, I will be referring interested people (both of you) to this post for details on my leadership tidbit. Here it is. Consistently maintain high expectations for you and your teammates. If I am forced to pick just one tip on leadership this would be it. If you think of great leaders you have seen or encountered they likey did just this – they held themselves and their teammates to a standard of excellence. It sounds so easy, yet is so difficult to consisently achieve. Why? Because it is easy to drift to the human nature comfort zone of accepting good or okay performance instead of excellent performance or it is easy to drift in to a comfort zone where you hold some teammates to a higher performance standard than others. This last situation is where you can really lose your star teammates because nothing is more frustrating to a star teammate than seeing their leader hold a fellow teammate to a lesser standard. There are numerous complimentary behaviors that surround this concept of maintaining high expectations such as frequent conversations with your teammates when they meet these high expectations and telling them when they fell short of these expectations. Frequent, honest, two-way conversations, even when neither one of you feel like a conversation, is a key ingredient to keeping on top of this leadership tidbit. Want a story about how I learned this and a funny side story, then read on…

I first remember learning this leadership tip from my high school basketball coach. It was the start of the basketball season my junior year and we have nine returning seniors and they were all good ball players. I knew our coach liked to have 10 players on his varsity roster. Most teams has 12, but he liked to have 10. I was your average high school basketball player, okay probably less than average talent, but I absolutely loved the game and I knew I wanted to be on this winning team. I went to my coach before the season started and told him I wanted the 10th roster spot and that if I were to earn it that no one and I mean no one would out work me or out hustle me in any team meeting, practice, or game. He looked at me and asked why don’t you want to play JV ball where you can start and get a lot of minutes and then you can play varsity next year after the nine graduate? I told him that I wanted to be part of this winning team and that I would rather sit on the end of the bench and contribute to the team in all of the intangible ways that I knew I could than play on the JV team. He believed in me and I was the 10th man on the roster. He told me when he granted me the roster spot that he was going to hold me to the same expectations as the nine talented seniors and he consistently did throughout the entire season. He worked and worked me and I became a better ball player and most importantly a better person because of it. He had the respect of the entire team. I rarely and I mean rarely played and it was the best basketball season of my life. I had a great time and truly believe that I contributed to the success of the team. Now here is a funny side story. During one game, we were up by quite a few points midway through the fourth quarter. My classmates in the stands started chanting, “We want Doug, We want Doug, We want Doug”. The chant became louder and louder. I was getting embarassed as the chant continued. Next thing you know here comes the coach down the bench to my spot at the end of the bench. He looks at me and says, “if they want you so bad, why don’t you go up there and sit with them.” Then he laughed. I still chuckle about this when I reflect on the memory. I can’t remember if I got in the game or not – that is not what is important – the life lessons learned are.

Oh, and if you are curious we won most of our games that season including sectional. It was a sectional championship before class basketball – those of you with an appreciation for Indiana High School Basketball know there is a difference. However, we lost in regionals. Some guy by the name of Steve Alford was better than us. He was Mr. Basketball in the State of Indiana that year.

green experiment } will this work?

2009-08-25T17:24:00Z

An experiment conducted by our retail team here at FORUM:

Yeah, doing good by the environment is fine, but GOING GREEN WITH ENVY is great! We are jealous if a member has something at another financial institution. So what are we going to do about it? We are going to ASK for that business…we are GREEN WITH ENVY! IF and only IF you wear GREEN on Friday, you can wear jeans for FREE! (No open toed shoes and other standard dress code guidelines apply.) Don’t you think it will make it a lot easier to ask for everyone’s business, if we are all wearing GREEN and a member asks “What’s up with the GREEN?” Who’s the most jealous?

Do you think it will work? Doesn’t cost anything and I like the attempt – beats the status quo. Will let you know how it goes.

collections roundtable recap

2009-08-20T21:34:00Z

Thank you to the credit unions who made the trip to FORUM CU for the collections roundtable. We appreciate Joe Weber from NCCI providing lunch and showcasing how his company can help with credit union collection efforts. He discussed their field calls, loss mitigation strategies and even a new product they are preparing for a launch involving the assessment of real estate owned (REO). With this new solution a credit union can submit an address and receive not only the present value of the home, but also a future value of the property in question. This can help credit unions determine as to if they should quickly sell a property owned or hold on to it until the right bid comes along. Credit unions in attendance agreed that field calls will be an important strategy moving forward given the current economic situation. Some good discussions and some networking after the presentations.

CUNA Technology Best Practice Awards

2009-08-20T13:27:00Z

We are honored to be included among seven credit unions recognized by the CUNA Technology Council as innovators. We are in good company with the credit unions that received awards. This award is a reflection of the stellar team we are blessed to have here at FORUM Solutions. We would like to thank the CUNA Technology Council for their hard work in facilitating these awards. We wish we could have come to San Francisco for the award ceremony.

Innovators Hailed by CUNA Tech Council 8/19/2009

Seven credit unions were honored with 2009 CUNA Technology Council Best Practices Awards at the group’s recent 14th annual summit meeting in San Francisco.

Category winners were $1.9 billion Tinker FCU of Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma (technology infrastructure), $311 million Nassau Financial FCU of Westbury, N.Y. (sales/management and marketing), $18 billion State Employees’ CU of Raleigh, N.C. (information/security privacy), and $230 million Envision CU of Tallahassee, Fla. (miscellaneous.)

Three credit unions also received honorable mention awards at the Aug. 5-8 gathering: $1 billion FORUM Credit Union in Indianapolis for an interactive intelligence program, $1.3 billion Technology CU in San Jose, Calif., for an online banking administrative tool, and $140 million Beehive FCU of Rexburg, Idaho, for its in-branch video display software switching system.

Winner presentations and more information about the awards are available by selecting the “Best Practices” link at CUNA Technology Council

eGenda solution now available

2009-08-19T19:19:00Z

If you are interested in automating your Board governance process we might have a solution that can help. We have developed a solution we call eGenda that our Board of Directors here at FORUM Credit Union use. With this solution they can view Board packets over the Internet, discuss items, vote and view documents. Results are archived for future reference. IThis solution has improved our efficiency and has allowed for more productive Board meetings. It serves as the portal between our executive team at the credit union and our Board of Directors. For details please check out the screencasts we have put together to show from a high level the capabilities of the solution. Details follow:

If you are interested here is how we offer our software solutions. We provide you with the source code for the solution and provide the appropriate documentation and instructions to get you up and running. The solution is built with the Microsoft .NET platform. The source code is “as is” and you are free to enhance it and do what you want with it. Pricing is simple. Take a look at the solution and tell us what you feel it is worth to your credit union or business in the case of eGenda and if we find the price to be reasonable then it is a done deal – that simple.

collections roundtable update

2009-08-18T18:25:00Z

The collections roundtable we have put together with NCCI takes place this Thursday at 11:30. We have seven credit unions and fourteen attendees confirmed for this lunch and learn. I will post a summary of the event here. If you want to attend just post a comment and we will get you signed up.

collections lunch & learn update for 8.20

2009-08-14T04:18:00Z

We have five credit unions and one league confirmed to attend the August 20 lunch and learn roundtable. We likely won’t sit at round tables, but NCCI will be hosting the event talking about their in field collection services and we will be exchanging notes. Still time to join us. Just comment here and let me know you want to attend. Event starts at 11:30am and is at FORUM CU. By the way, it is free. Come join us.

unintended consequences } CCA2009

2009-08-14T02:52:00Z

If you are reading this, you must have some interest in how the Credit Card Act of 2009 (CCA2009) is impacting credit unions. Finding and implementing a compliance solution to CCA2009 has been all consuming lately at FORUM Solutions and has made us a little cranky (maybe it is just me being cranky). With this act being signed by President Obama on May 22, the interim final ruling being issued on July 15 and a compliance date of August 20 calling it a short window is being generous. Here at FORUM we are swept up in the CCA2009 compliance tornado because of our use of the multi-featured open-ended lending (MFOEL) platform. We have enjoyed this platform for many years as it has given us the ability to remove obstacles and burdens from the loan application process for our members who are repeat and loyal borrowers from the credit union. This has streamlined processes making us more efficient in our lending process which results in lower transaction costs per loan initiated and these lower costs are passed on to our members in the form of lower loan rates. The CCA2009 language includes not just credit cards, but any loan issued under this MFOEL platform which for us includes auto loans, signature loans, overdraft protection lines of credit, and home equity lines of credit. Really the only loans not impacted are auto loans originated at the dealership (done under a closed end note), fixed term second mortgages, and first mortgages. Here at FORUM more than 25,000 member loans are impacted by this new rule. In a nutshell, compliance to CCA2009 means we have to issue a statement with specific data elements as a kind of payment reminder to the member at least 21 days in advance of the due date. I won’t bore you with the details of the data elements. The important thing to keep in mind is depending on a member’s due date their regular monthly statement won’t necessarily satisfy the new requirement for 21 day notice and for those on payroll deducted payments how do you give 21 days notice when they pay weekly or bi-weekly? In our opinion, this is where the unintended consequences comes in – did the legislators really intend to include such loan situations and potentially penalize those on payroll deduction? We applaud their efforts in attempting to clean up unscrupulous credit card behavior by mostly mega credit card issuers, however we just think the quick action swept more in to the scope of this than they intended. We sent our comment letter to the Federal Reserve Board (at least made us feel better for a few minutes) and have been working on the solution. Interested in what we are doing? – read on…

The FORUM Solutions team led out on finding the best compliance option that would be one, member centric and two, cost efficient. We had several ideas and narrowed them down to two after much debate and help from legal counsel as well as talking to other credit unions. The final two were bumping due dates on loans that did not have an end of month due date and modifying our regular statements to comply with the Act and issuing modified loan statements with a coupon payment reminder. We settled on the delivery of modified loan statements. We didn’t want to bump members’ due dates and we didn’t want to mess with their payroll deduction either. Speaking of payroll deduction we did figure out a way to preserve this payment behavior. For those members who are enrolled on e-Statements (60%+) we will be delivering these new payment reminder statements electronically and for the others we will delvier through paper. We are blessed here at FORUM Solutions to have such a talented and passionate team. I really don’t like it when people call us the IT department, thus the name FORUM Solutions, as we do so much more than information technology. The team gets credit unions and credit union lending. Many of my teammates have been reading not only the CCA2009 language but also Regulation Z in their attempt to better understand the problem so we can deliver the right solution – trust me that is a sign of dedication. Thankfully we have the talented designers, systems gurus, and developers on the team to think of, mold, and implement a custom solution that is member centric, cost efficient and compliant. We will make the deadline and we feel good about the solution. I have talked to many credit unions that aren’t in a position to make the deadline and as a result have to suspend collecting late loan fees and reporting to the credit bureaus which is not fair to the overall membership. Clearly unintended consquences in our opinion and we still have hope that perhaps this Act will be modified in the near future.

collections lunch & learn } 8.20

2009-07-22T17:34:00Z

We will be hosting a free lunch and learn on the topic of collections here at FORUM. We have invited NCCI in to talk about their field work and loss mitigation solutions. Sharon from NCCI will be sharing how NCCI conducts field work on behalf of credit unions. In a recent conversation I had with my friend Dana Rawlings at Smart Financial , I learned about how his credit union is successfully using field calls for those members that they haven’t been able to reach by phone who are now 31 days past due. They describe it as a friendly nudge to get the member to talk to the credit union on how they can work together to resolve the situation. We will also have time to talk about any collections topic you desire.

The date is August 20 and the time is 11:30am to 1:30pm. All credit unions are welcome. Just leave a comment here or reach out to me and we will get you a spot reserved. Free lunch and good company – guaranteed.

our June 30 deadline has passed and we are 20 short

2009-07-01T04:29:00Z

Bummer – our June 30 deadline to reach 100 pledged attendees for Your Symposium has just passed. We tried. This crowd sourcing experiment was both a failure and a success. The failure – we did not reach our goal. We did not promote nearly enough. Our day jobs at FORUM Solutions got in the way – as they should. These are challenging times for credit unions and FORUM is no exception. A lot going on and FORUM Solutions is doing a lot of routine and innovative stuff to make a difference at FORUM Credit Union. I feel like I let down the people and companies that pledged their attendance and support. You all are so passionate about our little symposium and we love you for that. I apologize I did not promote more. Now, the success. We learned a lot about crowd sourcing and had fun while we learned. Hey, life is way too short not to learn and have fun. We feel like we can apply what we learned not only to future symposiums but also other projects. By experimenting with crowd sourcing we saved the money we would have lost by subsidizing the symposium with the attendance totals we would have drawn. Trust me, it is not cheap to host this event in the manner we do.

We will miss not seeing you in Indy this year. If you have any ideas on how to preserve the momentum this event had please reach out to us and let us know what is on your mind. We would love to host again some day and bring the brightest and most passionate credit union people together again.

sprout = another ignite idea implemented

2009-07-01T04:22:00Z

The new Sprout account at FORUM that goes live today (July 1) is another idea from ignite that is being implemented. Very proud of the ignite group and their ability to generate innovations that go to market.

13 days until deadline

2009-06-17T16:47:00Z

We need 27 more pledged attendees to move forward with the ‘09 Your Symposium. We could use more presentation auditions – lots of talk, lots of inquiries, lots of threats – not enough action.