WASHINGTON – The National Credit Union Foundation is stepping up with a pledge of millions of dollars to adopt a program which promises to involve far more credit unions in serving lower income members and households.

The Filene Research Institute started the REAL Solutions program (Relevant, Effective, Asset-building, and Loyalty-producing) about three years ago in response to what it was discovering in its research about what lower income households really needed by way of financial services.

“We started collecting this body of data and began to feel like we needed to do something with it,” explained Bob Hoel, Executive Director of the Institute.

Hoel explained that Filene had not foreseen developing or running the program long term, but that it wanted to get the program off the ground in the hope that other credit union organizations would step in as it matured to run it over the long haul.

Unlike other efforts, which have not been as broad, REAL Solutions envisioned working less with individual credit unions and more with credit union leagues. The leagues, Filene realized, could help pick up some of the costs of introducing products and strategies for working with low-income households to their members and would be better positioned to know the problems their league members wanted to focus upon.

Accordingly, Filene started three pilot programs with leagues in Maryland, Ohio and Wisconsin and saw those take off as the program began to publicize its efforts, with the help of the leagues.

According to John Florian, vice president with the Ohio League and executive director of the Ohio Credit Union Foundation, the league has seen the number of CUs interested in the Stretch Pay program, REAL Solutions turnkey payday lending alternative product, move from having only 10 CUs interested when the program was introduced to having another 6 interested as other CU participation began to build. The other participating leagues noted similar results, according to Lois Kitsch, program director for REAL Solutions. The steady growth in the effort led Filene to consider that it was time to let another credit union organization take the lead in running the program. “We are primarily a research organization,” Hoel pointed out, adding that REAL Solutions had grown to a point where it needed more assets and support than Filene considered itself able to provide. The NCUF began to consider getting involved with the program last year, when REAL Solutions applied for a grant from NCUF and more NCUF members began to learn more about the program and contemplate supporting it, explained Steve Delfin, NCUF's executive director. “We had heard about the program and had also begun to pick up the buzz about it from other credit union sources as well,” Delfin explained. “Actually, quite a lot of buzz and we realized that with support from the Foundation, this program could grow much faster.” Delfin said the NCUF anticipated bringing between $900,000 and $1 million to the effort, per year, to fund its next three years of operations as it seeks to broaden CU participation and bring it to steadily more leagues. In the NCUF's vision, over the next three years the program will continue to work with Maryland, Wisconsin and Ohio to explain the program and recruit more CUs as well as to recruit more leagues to the effort. Ideally, from the NCUF's point of view, each of the new leagues will recruit around 20 of its member CUs to participate in the program and receive the benefit of the proven business models, technology and skills in working with lower income households that the program and other CUs have accumulated over the years and which will be part of the Real Solutions dataset.

The Real Solutions program will also conduct at least two national workshops that will enable participating CU executives and staff to learn about the lives and needs of low-income households directly from the people who live in those households.

The staff and executives will then return to their CUs with turnkey products they can offer lower income households in their areas and a commitment to do so, according to a planning document for the effort.

The program will also provide CUs with an online database of different ways CUs have found success serving lower income households. The database will be available to both CUs and leagues to use to research their own programs and offerings.

Although there have been similar programs which have worked on a smaller basis, the REAL Solutions program will be the most comprehensive industry-wide effort to help CUs develop products and services for lower income households, a distinction which is not lost on Delfin.

“For the longest time there has been a wide-ranging belief that lower income households would not provide the best source of future credit union members,” Delfin said. “Well, I hope that the REAL Solution effort can help show that lower income households can benefit from CU membership and be transformed into the next generation of CU members nationwide.”

-dmorrison@cutimes.com

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New NCUF Effort Seeks to Integrate Low-Income Service into Every CU's Agenda

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