Saving time and sharing information in small groups proves productive

MIRAMAR, Fla., and VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.-What if you were a vendor and wanted to pitch your services to CUSO bigwigs in south Florida, but didn't want to make multiple presentations? Or, what if several credit unions in the Virginia Beach area wanted a condensed version of the big CUSO picture? The simple answer to both questions is: schedule a meeting in one convenient location, gather the best and some of the brightest thinkers, planners and doers together, bring on the sales pitch and let the questions fly. Two meetings, each different in purpose and scope took place here and in Virginia Beach recently, but it's a safe bet that things will be accomplished from both of them. A group of CUSO professionals from the south Florida area has been meeting for several years now, said Nancy Rappaport, SVP/COO of Tropical Values, Inc., the CUSO of Tropical FCU, Miami. "It's an informal group, and we get get together once a month to share ideas and talk about operations, new ideas and products or whatever one of us wants to discuss. But a lot of good has come of it." David Lawrence, executive director of Strategic partnerships for Netstock.com would likely agree. A former CUSO president himself (Advantage Resources, Inc., the CUSO of AEA CU, Sunnyvale, Calif.) Lawrence gave a presentation about Sharebuilder (CU Times, April 19) to a room of interested listeners. One of them, Tamara Douglas of Fairwinds Financial Services, is the first CUSO in the Sunshine State to offer the program. "Sharebuilder complements our current investment services program and encourages members to become introduced to the market with no restrictions on investment amounts. I think the concept will take off," said Tamara. ShareBuilder is gaining CU clients across the country, said Lawrence. As an incentive to come on board, Netstock will waive the $7,500 subsciber fee until the end of the fall as well as the $4,000 monthly maintenance fee. Mark Bugalski of Minnesota Mutual also gave a presentation on the upcoming roll out of Minnesota Life's plan for Custom Quote - the property, casualty, life, and health sales platform that will offer a national, multiple carrier delivery system supported by advanced technology and expanded call center capacity. At Chartway FCU's offices in Virginia Beach, consultant Tom Davis hosted a "Visioning Session" with five credit unions that together represent some $2 billion in assets.The purpose of the session was to provide an overview of financial service and operational CUSOs from the standpoint of multiply-owned entities. "They wondered," said Davis, "what the advantages and difficulties are to CUSOs being owned by multiple CUs." So Davis brought in Randy Karnes of WESCO, who spoke about a DP CUSO; Vic Pantea of Member Gateways who spoke about online brokerage options and start-up and governance costs; Cory Mackwood, of CU Mortgage Company spoke about a CUSO mortgage operation and Pete Snyder of Addison Avenue Financial Partners tackled what it's like to offer alternative investment services to members of several credit unions. "It was a great way to offer a concentrated view of what these kinds of approaches can bring to these credit unions," said Davis. "They were each asking, `What's in it for us?' and we were able to answer that question. "It's all about new business models. Getting scale to lower costs. Credit unions have this wonderful advantage. The cooperative model makes this stuff happen faster and better than other approaches." The assembled CUs were Langley FCU, Chartway FCU, Newport News FCU, Amphibious Base FCU and First Advantage FCU. Davis said the next step for each CU is to go back (heads full of info) and consider what they've learned and where it all fits in with their CU's planning. Another meeting will be scheduled in a month he said. -caburger@cutimes.com