Recently, I was chatting with a fellow marketer at an extremely large credit union and asked if she was going to attend one of the upcoming national credit union marketing conferences.
Much to my dismay, she launched into an explanation of why her credit union no longer goes to any credit union conference. How her credit union needed the vitality and innovation of outside industries, something that the credit union industry could no longer provide as it is dated, limited and old-school.
She then explained how this reasoning was trickling directly down from her CEO, a CEO who left the banking industry years ago and was now running a credit union. A CEO who, once recognized within the credit union industry with local and state awards, no longer bothered to attend local chapter meetings, state league meetings or even national credit union conferences. (A very banker-like thing to do, I might add.) And worse yet, this same CEO informed the executive team that there was no need, no value, no time for them to participate in any credit union events, local or national.
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The reason this conversation struck me, or rather, twisted my gut, is that I have had similar conversations with other marketers at very large credit unions who stated the same reasons almost verbatim. Many of these marketers' CEOs came up through the credit union ranks and did not hop over into the credit union industry from the banking industry within the last decade. But based on some of their business decisions lately, I can't help but wonder if some of these large credit unions are planning to do some hopping themselves–yes, I'll say it–become a bank. Especially since I've noticed that nearly every executive position they've filled over the past few years has been with–you've guessed it–former big banking executives.
Now I feel there is no need to bash bankers in general. We live in a capitalistic society, and I say God Bless America and all her profit-making entities. Initially, when we brought our banker friends over (as we felt they had seen the light), I found it a good thing, a positive thing. There were a number of things our banker-friends could share with us that they are very, very good at, such as business lending and new business development. Heck, even that forbidden word: sales. But now I wonder, is it too much? Have we tainted the pool? Has the credit union movement become so watered down by bankers that we no longer feel the need to support the very thing that made us different, special, better than the banks: each other?
When our own kind start to sneer at our own credit union conferences and claim they have no need of the interaction and networking support within our own credit union family, I have to ask, have we given away our own movement to the very people we despise?
Footnote: At the Cues Experience opening general session last month in Minneapolis, the speaker was Arkadi Kuhlmann, self-described as "the bad-boy of banking," president/CEO of ING Direct, which in four years grew to be the sixth largest saving bank in the United States and the largest Internet bank in the country. In that speech he said he never attends banking conferences and the he never hires bankers.
Opinions expressed by Marketing Diva Deb are her own and not representative of her current or former credit union employers, the NCCUL, NCUA, CUNA, GAC, CUES, PTSA, GSA, USPS or any other trade or executive association. However, she has it on good authority that Johnny Depp totally agrees with her.
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