CUES Podcast

Terrance Williams says it was his dad who taught him to be a leader who listens, an intern who asked him how he knows insurance is still the right career for him and his parents together who instilled in him his mantra of “paying it forward.”

In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Williams, the new president/CEO of CUESolutions provider TruStage®, illustrates his leadership style by describing his approach to having lunch.

“I want to make sure that everyone’s comfortable engaging with me,” says Williams. “When I go get lunch, I talk to everyone in the cafeteria, regardless of their role, and regardless of what they do, and I want them to view and see me as someone that's approachable as someone that they can talk to and engage with—and give me feedback, give me a suggestion, give me a thought. (That) doesn’t mean we’re going to do everything that comes my way, but I always want to maintain that open forum, so that people are comfortable coming to me and approaching me."
Williams explains in the show how he was able to respond to an intern’s question about whether Williams had made the right decision to pursue a career in insurance. He is certain that he has.
“I ... believe what we do genuinely matters,” he says. “When you think about the ability to transfer risk, the ability for me to live my life without the worry of being able to take care of the unexpected, without having to worry about what might happen with the loss of a loved one, ... our role, when you boil it all down ... is really to ensure that we can help rebuild lives to the degree money and caring can. That’s what we do. And I would like us to talk about that more as an industry.”
Williams adds that one of TruStage’s strengths is its mutual structure. “This belief in this notion of people helping people, the ability for us to make long-term decisions that really are centered around the member, the ability to ensure that we can invest today with the recognition that we will benefit someone tomorrow.”
The show also gets into:

• Williams’ mantra, paying it forward, and how he wears that idea on his arm (see photo)
• How Williams won a national award for chief marketing officers without being a CMO
• The job during Williams’ career that was most formative for him as a leader
• Diversity, equity and inclusion

Links for this show:

• TruStage
• TruStage’s CUESolutions provider page
• Key Strategies for Setting Up a Diversity & Inclusion Program with Angela Russell from TruStage
• CUESolutions providers are trusted credit union suppliers
• Transcript

Many mainstream credit unions have long thought that community development financial institution status wasn’t something they could or should consider. Our guest, Jamie Strayer, ICUDE, would beg to differ.

Founder of CU Strategic Planning, Tacoma, Washington, Strayer says CDFI status is a great thing for CUs’ ROA, members and communities, as well as for U.S. taxpayers. Strayer knows a lot about it because she has helped CUs get $103 million in CDFI funding in the last 10 years.

“That funding produced $5 billion in loans that the credit unions otherwise would not have done,” she explains. “High-yield lending with every penny covered by loan loss reserves drives ROA.

“And this is where is gets really good,” she adds. “That ROA allows them to grow faster. They can accept more deposits while preserving their net worth. When they approve those loans, people tell their friends and family, ‘That credit union gave me a loan. You should go there.’ The organic growth occurs without spending more money on marketing. This program is rocket fuel for growth for credit unions.”

Strayer also says that the CDFI program reduces the number of people on federal entitlements. If a CU can make a car loan to a low-income worker, for example, that person may be able to stay off unemployment.

“CDFI status is the carrot for trying something new and even inventing new financial products,” Stayer adds. “What’s to prevent a credit union from trying something new when they’re not going to lose even a penny?”

The show also gets into:

· The difference between CDFI status and a low-income designation

· The seven criteria for CDFI status—and how CUs almost always automatically qualify on six of them

· Statistics about how much CDFI status boosts CU ROA

· What to consider before applying for CDFI status

· The current political situation around the CDFI fund

· The most inspiring CDFI project Strayer has worked on in her career

· What you’ll get if you attend Strayer’s session at Execu/Net in August in Big Sky, Montana

Links:

· U.S. Treasury CDFI status

· NCUA low-income designation

· CU Strategic Planning

· Execu/Net

Our guest, organizational scientist Jerlando F. L. Jackson, Ph.D., lives by the mantra, “Organizations are made up of people. It is the people and their decision-making that we want to change.”

The Vilas distinguished professor of higher education and the director and chief research scientist of Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jackson starts off the show by defining the difference between “diversity” and “inclusion.”

Diversity, he says, includes the full spectrum of human differences, such as race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic situation and political beliefs. He also says it’s valuable to consider lifestyles, family composition and education level.

“Inclusion is very different,” he explains. “It is not simply compiling a list of diverse characteristics, but rather an ability to cultivate a sense of community. An inclusive organization promotes and sustains a sense of belonging. It values and practices respect for the talents, beliefs and backgrounds as well as the ways of living” of its customers and staff members.

The magic comes from committing to both diversity and inclusion, according to Jackson. “When an organization commits to diversity and inclusion, it manifests itself through a bold mission, strategic priorities and high impact practices to support a diverse workplace and leverage the effects of diversity to achieve a competitive advantage with a highly skilled workforce and a capacity to relate to the full spectrum of customer.”

What’s the first step if you’re thinking of launching a D&I program at your CU? Jackson recommends an assessment of your culture and readiness.

In the show, Jackson also provides: five ways you’ll benefit from prioritizing D&I; five roadblocks you’re likely to encounter when launching a D&I initiative; and three powerful statements worth considering about D&I.

Links:

• JCF LLC
• Email Jerlando F. L. Jackson, Ph.D.
• Coming soon: Organizational Disparity Institute
• Inaugural Diversity Insight column, “Not Intentionally Inclusive = Unintentionally Exclusive”
• Subscribe to CUES content emails to get a link to our monthly Diversity Insight column delivered to your inbox

When Tim Green first heard—back in January—the news about the spread of COVID-19 overseas, he decided to lead his credit union to prepare for a scenario in which the disease would shut down the whole county where his credit union is located.

He says he thought at the time that if the situation turned out to be less dire, his team would still benefit from the exercise. When Los Angeles County, California, did in fact close down, Tim and his team at $1.8 billion F&A Federal Credit Union in Monterey Park were more ready than most businesses.

Having antennae out to market signals and being open to responding to them is a hallmark of great leadership. And yet Green is most humble in this show. CEO for just about 13 months, he is grateful to his board for their support of this initiative. He’s grateful to other financial institutions for the ideas he “stole” from them and adapted to best suit his credit union.

Green explains in the show that one of the first things he started working on when he joined the credit union was operational readiness—determining what was effective and what wasn’t in terms of people, systems and processes. A key thing he found was that “we were very adept at disaster recovery, but what also became pretty apparent was that our business continuity planning was not where we wanted it to be.”

In January, when the focus narrowed to preparing for the closure scenario, “we really went through it in a sequential way. We ordered a bunch of equipment. ... The processes were tested. We tested in our training environment, then we moved people remotely. By the time we got to the first week in March, we were really ready to handle this and operate 90% of the core credit union functions remotely.

“Once we had operational readiness,” he continues, “... the first thing we needed to do was think, ‘How are we doing to take care of our members?’” Among other programs, the CU offers members financially affected by COVID-19 enhanced skip-a-pay and a short-term assistance loan.

A third leg of the stool was employees. “We were able to move about 75% of our back-office staff out of the building (the CU has two branches) and about 70%” of all staff, he explains. “We gave everybody on the team below vice president a free week of PTO ... and immediately the goodwill started to flow back from our employees."
The CU closed its headquarters branch to walk-in traffic to better protect staff. The other branch has a bandit barrier between staff and members. The credit union also is paying branch workers a short-term 30% raise and catering lunch daily, so staff don’t have to leave the building to pick up food.

“Because we were ready to serve operationally, we were then able to really reach out and provide tangible benefit to our membership, simultaneously demonstrating a commitment to our employees that had carried us through thus far.”

The show also gets into:

• How Green’s risk management background informed his credit union’s response
• The thing that has worked best for F&A FCU in its pandemic response
• How F&A FCU’s response reflected its values--what its leadership thought was the right thing to do
• What F&A FCU might do next in its pandemic response effort
• Green’s concerns about the economic recovery and helping members through that