The pandemic has brought challenges for all of us in many ways. One question that is in everyone’s mind: What is next? There is a lot much uncertainty about the near future. For Credit Unions, members are concerned about mortgages, car loans, stimulus checks, etc., along with what will happen from here. So, the need of the situation is to increase engagement with members. More engagement brings in more trust and more business. Surveying the members and continuous touch with them via modern tools will keep your Credit Union top of mind for all sorts of financial needs.

Hillary Nelson, a Data Solutions Consultant at Wings Financial Credit Union, shared her version on Member Engagement at the Transformation Challenge for 2020 summit organized by CULytics.

Founded in 1938, Wings Financial Credit Union has a family of 298,000 Members and $6 Billion in Assets. Wings Financial Credit Union is passionate to embrace the cooperative spirit to make CUs unique and to give flight to member’s financial dreams. And, to do that, member engagement is required. So, to know if the members are engaged and to measure the engagement, Wings Financial Credit Union has developed a member engagement score that can be used to check member engagement.

5 Components to Member Engagement

Member score at Wings consists of five components and under these five components, there are 120+ factors that are measured on every member, every day. These factors are individually scored and aggregated to the component category level. Each component has its score as well, and then a weight is applied to those components and aggregated one more time for getting one score per member per day. The five components that are used to look at member engagement are the followings:

1. Products and Services
   Account Ownership and Relationships, Mobile App and Online Portal Registration of the members
2. Product Utilization
   Number and Frequency of Transactions, Member Rewards Redemption
   
   
3. Organizational Relationship
   In Branch Visits, Online Portal and Mobile App Usage, Campaign Response, Loan Applications
   
   
4. Competitive Relationship
   ACH credit reporting data is used to look at transfers to external financial institutions and loans with Other Financial Institutions
5. Performance
   Early/late Payments, Bad Address, NSF

Member Engagement at Wings Financial

At Wings, member engagement is divided into five categories:

1. Significantly Less Engaged: Members who have minimal activity with the credit union and have significant accounts with other financial institutions.
2. Less Engaged: Members that have minimum balance saving accounts with the Credit Union. No additional account and not meaningfully engaged with the credit union; just do enough to keep their membership open.
3. Engaged: A typical everyday member that has a saving account, check-in account with a debit card, and probably a credit card or loan come under this category. He / She visits the branch occasionally, logs in to account regularly but they also have one or two accounts with other competing financial institutions.
4. The other two categories are More Engaged and Significantly More Engaged.

Member Engagement During COVID-19 increased as at the end of March, branches were closed and things were online. Members used online methods to check-in to their accounts and making transactions. Online activities show more member engagement.

Benefits

Efforts keep us focused on achieving the set goals. With the dedicated approach, Wings Financial Credit Union could successfully achieve many benefits. Working on member engagement score helped in:

• Developing the ability to quickly gauge changes in member behavior
• Doubling response rates for campaigns using the score
• Building foundational infrastructure that has been leveraged for new initiatives
• Getting new ideas from business units that lead to new measures
• Doing new conversations around member experience and value

Being able to find the most engaged members and how to interact with them and what products fit them the best and what they expect from their credit union allows to better understand the members. Prioritizing and increasing member engagement, gaining their trust and lessening their financial fears will help the financial institution in reaping long term benefits. The members might have real questions and want to engage with the organization. Never forget that an engaged member not only buys more products but also refers friends and family members back to the Credit Union. So, do what is fair for the member and right for the membership.