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How To Invest In Your Members

Effective outsourcing of investment services is a major step toward success for the institution and the members it serves.

If your credit union offers investment services, these numbers should be a wakeup call: 42% of members are unaware that their credit union offers investment services. And 60% of them want help with their investment needs.

These numbers also speak to the opportunities that investment services present for increasing member loyalty and institutional profitability. But to truly take advantage of that opportunity, effective management is critical.

Managing investment services inside a credit union presents multiple challenges, including technology, staffing, budgets, and thin margins. To be profitable in this line of business, reducing costs and driving growth must be a top priority.

The most common way to offer non-deposit investment products to members is through third-party brokerage arrangements. The extent to which a program internalizes these functions also determines the potential risk and volatility that can significantly affect the program’s bottom line.

Choosing the right partner can help ensure significant efficiency and growth in your investment program. The right partner is one who helps you offload as much of your costs and outsource as much of your investment program as possible while maintaining control, quality, and brand identity.

Regardless of your investment program structure ― outsourced managed program, for instance, or an internal dual-employee program ― it’s critical to manage productivity and performance, growing the business while protecting earnings.

Effective management focused on growth will include some of the following:

  • The ability to recruit and retain top talent.
  • A compensation structure that will incent and reward the appropriate type of activity and client management.
  • The resources and ability to coach all levels of staffing from assistants to associate advisors to full-service financial advisors.
  • An actionable business plan that provides the framework for sales, marketing, client building activities, branch promotion, seminars, and book development.
  • An established set of benchmarks for growth and profitability to use as goals and comparisons for your own investment program.

The right investment services partner will provide you the best possible opportunity to meet these goals for a program that will benefit your bottom line and most importantly, provide the best opportunity for a sound financial future for your members who came to you as their trusted financial partner and advisor.

Gateway Services Group is a credit union-owned family of companies that offers customized investment program solutions that have resulted in an average of 25% revenue increases for their member-owned financial cooperative clients.

Click here to request our Program Assessment, a comprehensive management report that incudes recommendations on how to improve the performance of your investment program.

Click here for information about our other services, including loan participations, direct MBL opportunities, and automotive-related products such as GAP, warranty, SERPS, and roadside assistance plans.

This article is sponsored by a recognized solutions provider in the credit union industry. Callahan & Associates does not endorse vendors or the solutions they offer, and the views and opinions offered here might not reflect those of Callahan. If you are interested in contributing an article on CreditUnions.com, please contact the Callahan team at ads@creditunions.com or 1-800-446-7453.
May 21, 2018

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