ANN ARBOR, Mich. — One of the first objectives Bill Beardsley will take on as the new chairman of NACUSO's Business Services Advisory Board is to find out how many business services CUSOs are actually out there.
The advisory board is one of four councils that address key areas in the industry: financial services, operational services, and consumer lending. In the works is a fifth board that will use universities, innovation models both inside and outside the industry to focus on critical thinking, innovation, and implementation.
Beardsley is looking to expand the business services advisory board beyond its traditional four to five CUSO representation to all "commercial" CUSOs, which he describes as business lending and services entities. "I don't think a small group is an effective way to deepen engagement within a larger group," said Beardsley, who is also president/chief lending officer of Michigan Business Connection, a CUSO serving the state's credit unions.
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On the other hand, "There's certainly strength in numbers but bigger is not always better," he added. NACUSO has small, medium, and big CUSOs. If you look at commercial CUSOs, there are exceptionally talented people there."
Participants in NACUSO's annual Business Services Collaborative in November set the agenda for the following year. Small Business Administration lending, credit union training, and collaborative underwriting will be the three critical areas of focus in 2008, Beardsley said. The next step will be "trying to digest them and what they mean."
At NACUSO's Business Services Collaborative in New Orleans last year, participants expressed the desire to meet more frequently and gravitated to the roundtable dialogue model, Beardsley said.
"If we look at some of these objectives, we may find the need to meet more frequently," said Beardsley, adding NACUSO can play a role in facilitating more frequent or regional meetings if need be.
The advisory board will also take a hard look at "virtual aggregation," where one CUSO uses its expertise to help another CUSO be more competitive.
"Most CUSO CEOs are former bankers–don't hold that against us," Beardsley said. "We've had our share of Wall Street experiences. We joined the credit union industry with a fresh and sincere mission to collaborate."
Credit unions "have such a small share of the marketplace that they really have a long time ahead of them before they have to worry about competing against each other," Beardsley said.
He acknowledged that everything going on with the advisory board is still in its early stages but above all, "we really want to get a read on what challenges and issues [CUSOs] are facing."
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