10.49% loan growth for our KickStart client

While the NCUA has not yet released the 4th Quarter 2012 5300-data for all CUs, it is available for many CUs on an individual basis.

We can’t help but be beaming proud of Carole Wight and Holy Rosary CU…. and the terrific results she’s getting with her EverythingCU.com KickStart.

I just checked the 4Q12 5300 report for Holy Rosary, and it’s even better than we thought it’d be! We were hoping they would maintain a 3.9% lending growth rate, and THEY WOUND UP BEATING IT! Lending is up EVEN MORE than the previous quarter! Loans are up by 6.3% in just the past quarter!

The last two quarters combined have seen Holy Rosary’s lending go up by 10.49%! If her loan portfolio continues to grow at that pace, her CU will have seen a TWENTY PERCENT increase in loans for the year! Wow! Never in our wildest imaginations did we think KickStart could have such an immediate impact on a CU’s loan portfolio, but the proof is in the NCUA 5300 numbers.

Here is the latest:
Dec 31, 2010: 4,758,649
Mar 31, 2011: 4,647,966
Jun 30, 2011: 4,623,701
Sep 30, 2011: 4,719,143
Dec 31, 2011: 4,918,250
Mar 31, 2012: 7,623,506 <– Merger with a smaller CU
Jun 30, 2012: 7,607,091
Sep 30, 2012: 7,906,605 <– 1st full qtr w/KickStart
Dec 31, 2012: 8,405,157 <– 2nd full qtr w/KickStart

If you are ready to give KickStart Online Lending a try, then check out the SPECIAL OFFER we are running, or learn more on the KickStart information page.

KickStart results are in… and they are outstanding

KickStart is EverythingCU’s new online lending product. Carole Wight, President of Holy Rosary Credit Union in Kansas City, MO is using KickStart, and is thrilled with the results.

With the release of the latest 5300 NCUA report through the Third Quarter of 2012, we now have some hard numbers that show Carole’s outstanding loan growth improvement with the help of her new KickStart Lending tool.

Holy Rosary’s Total Loans (Acct 025B in the 5300 report) over the last several quarters looks like this:

Dec 31, 2010: 4,758,649
Mar 31, 2011: 4,647,966
Jun 30, 2011: 4,623,701
Sep 30, 2011: 4,719,143
Dec 31, 2011: 4,918,250
Mar 31, 2012: 7,623,506 <– Merger with a smaller CU
Jun 30, 2012: 7,607,091
Sep 30, 2012: 7,906,605 <– 1st full qtr w/KickStart

So as you can see via the numbers above, aside from their merger, KickStart has helped them see significant growth in the loan portfolio for the first time in quite a while. Besides the 4Q of 11, and the merger in 1Q 12, loan growth has been almost non-existent or even negative. Now armed with KickStart, Carole and her staff are able to serve members who want loans who can’t make it into the branch for whatever reason, or who want to apply for a loan during non-business hours. This most recent quarter represents loan growth of the portfolio by $299,514, which is a 3.94% increase. If that rate of growth continues, the CU will see a $1.2 million increase on a yearly comparison basis, which translates to a 15% increase on a starting loan portfolio of $7.6 million.

You can understand how excited we are for Carole to be having such fantastic success with KickStart, and for her members that are being served even better than they were before. It’s a joy for us to see Carole’s happiness with the service backed up by the proof of the NCUA 5300 report.

Thank you Carole for being such a great KickStart client! We are so thrilled that it’s working excellently for you, your staff, and your members! We are eagerly looking forward to more credit unions adopting KickStart and helping even more members apply for their loans online quickly and easily.

For more information about KickStart, just click here.

Dropping the words Credit Union

Yesterday, Sarah Snell-Cooke, Editor-In-Chief/Publisher of CU Times wrote an editorial titled Sometimes the best thing a credit union can do is give up ‘Credit Union’. This was brought to my attention in an excellent discussion topic started on EverythingCU.com.

Ms. Snell-Cooke’s editorial concludes with, “Get the consumers in the door first, and then explain to them about credit unions. The name on the door doesn’t matter – it’s what is on the inside that counts.”

Here’s the problem with this statement. As Snell-Cooke concedes, most of the general public have no idea what a credit union is. In addition to that, most staff working in a credit union don’t know what a credit union is. So CU staff are even LESS likely to educate people walking in as to what it is when the words are not even over the door.

Here is an imaginary conversation for credit unions who have dropped the words ‘credit union’ from their name:

Customer/member: “Hi I’d like to open a checking account. Do you have those here?”

Staff: “Why yes, certainly, I can open that for you. While we do the paperwork, can I tell you about what a credit union is?”

Customer/member: “Onion soup? I thought you guys were GTE Financial. Why would you tell me about onion soup?”

When the name is not over the door, mentioned nowhere, then starting a conversation about what it means to be a part of a credit union is as relevant to this new member as having a conversation about onion soup, which is what he thought he heard the staffer say.

Therefore I can not see the logical connection between dropping the words ‘credit union’ from an F.I.’s name as being a route to educating more people about what a credit union is.

Offering banking text messag… errr, nevermind.

In July, I wrote about what I would like to have as banking or credit union consumer… the ability to text message my bank or credit union with “balance” and get my current account balance sent back to my cell phone. I figured it might be one or two years before my credit union offered it. One executive of a 55,000 member credit union said he doesn’t see a need for it, his members are not asking for it. (Note to CU executive: How are you not seeing the MILLIONS of cell phones used by EVERYONE around you? Who doesn’t have a cell phone at this point?)

But now I realize that banks and credit unions are perfectly fine not offering it. Because the new generation of Personal Financial Management (PFM) sites (Wesabe, Mint, Geezeo) will do the job nicely on your credit union or bank account, bypassing the financial institution entirely. So credit unions and banks, sit back, relax, and let the new generation do it for you. No problem. I’ve already signed up on Geezeo, and I may check out Wesabe and Mint just to find out the differences between these online PFMs. It took me all of five minutes to sign up on Geezeo and verify my cell phone for text messaging balances, and I never had to leave my home. Future blog post: Why PFMs will soon rule the world. (Quicken and MS Money are now officially 15-minutes ago.)

And if you don’t think that online PFMs are going to take off and skyrocket, that’s probably what you thought about P2P lending… who would ever do that? Just look at Prosper’s growth rate… at the current rate, in one year, Prosper’s membership will make them larger than the third largest CU in the nation. And that’s in only their first 2.5 years of existence.