GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Like many credit unions, the $94 million Summit Credit Union has had trouble getting any kind of turnout for those free on-premise financial literacy seminars, but now the CU found an economical solution: hold Webinars with online phone conferencing.
"It worked beautifully for us and really cost us nothing since we were already using it for internal training and IT support," said Sam Whitehurst, president/CEO.
Whitehurst said the first Webinar was held Jan. 10 and drew 15 out of 20 that signed up, a considerable improvement from the lonely four who showed up for an on-premise session held a week earlier "and that included a free lunch."
Summit used WebEx, a San Francisco-based Webinar provider, for the Jan. 10 online session that dealt with credit scoring.
Whitehurst said the biggest concern about using Webinars was that the members would have difficulty with compatible technology. But that was not the case with only one participant bowing out because of computer problems.
Up to now, the select employee group-based Summit has been getting "less than 10" attendees to any of its education seminars held in CU offices on a mostly quarterly basis.
--jrubenscut@aol.com
