Last week Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and his fellow policymakers raised interest rates by .75 bp, lifting target interest rates to the 3.00% - 3.25% range. Based on comments made by Powell at the meeting, the Fed is likely to raise rates significantly before the end of the year.
"We have got to get inflation behind us," Powell told reporters. "I wish there were a painless way to do that. There isn't."
This pain can be an opportunity for credit unions to shine. As mission-based financial cooperatives, credit unions are perfectly poised to step in and show how they can serve their members in truly unique ways.
Here are a few suggestions your credit union can take to help ease members' economic pains.
1. Identify those in need.
Leverage your data as it will help you identify those living on the precipice of a financial disaster AS WELL as those heading in a similar direction.
2. Continue to nurture and foster programs that will allow for improved financial positions.
Whether it is via products like a debt consolidation loan, offering a deferred payment (a skip a payment), or improving financial literacy, a credit union needs to continue cultivating and nurturing these programs to help improve these members' lives.
3. Leveraging successes.
The members that have been helped can, in turn, help other members as they are an inspiration for change.
4. Creating a virtuous cycle of events.
Formalizing members' identification, nurturing, and leveraging into a formal recurring cycle of events will create a framework of continuous favorable results.
The current state of the economy has given credit unions another reason to prove their difference, to reach out and show their members how they are different from traditional financial institutions. To remind their members how they serve them and their community.
Let's Celebrate!
In honor of America's Credit Union Museum's HERSTORY exhibit celebrating credit union women making history AND this book being added to the museum's Ensweiler Research Library, we are holding a fundraiser.
A100% of the profit from the paperback books purchased on this webpage will be donated to fund the maintenance and upkeep of the HERSTORY exhibit.
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