Disruptors are the companies that are upending the ways we travel, shop, bank, and even
receive healthcare. We know the world is changing rapidly. While this is not a new concept, the rate at which change is occurring is. It took about ten years for the Sony PlayStation to displace the pinball machine. In recent times, Uber and Airbnb have begun to displace their competition in less than three years.
To survive, companies need to be nimble. Netflix, for example, started shipping DVDs to homes in 1999. In 2007 they delivered their billionth DVD, but they kept changing and quickly moved to stream video by 2008. They pivoted again to create their original content, and now with Disney's entrance into the streaming market, we will probably see another change.
In the credit union space, two disruptors to watch are Chime & Robinhood.
Chime is the market leader with a reported eight million primary account holders, making it the fifth-biggest bank in the U.S. It offers no hidden fees, early payments of a paycheck, and a "spot me" feature that provides customers with up to $100 for debit card purchases to be paid back.
Robinhood is an easy-to-use stock market trading tool. It came under recent scrutiny after it was used to help rally flagging companies such as AMC, and GameStop.
While several users were able to make a profit, more than not did not have the skill or training in the stock market and lost significantly.
If a credit union sees either of these disruptors in member's transactions, it is time to take action.
Here are four things you can do about disruptors:
1. Research.
Review your members' payments, debits, and credit history and see which vendors are the most significant.
2. Analyze.
Who are the most significant vendors/competition/others that your members also have a relationship with? Why do they have these relationships? Is that a friction point? Or a lack of awareness of a product service? Identify what a credit union can do. Create disruption as a new metric and watch it for change.
3. Create offerings the member can't refuse.
f the member has a debit/credit card, select retailers the member uses frequently and create custom rewards for those commonly used retailers. The rewards should entice the members to choose the credit union card.
4. Remove friction (convenience is king).
Remove as many frictions as possible so that the credit union products are as frictionless as possible.
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