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Regulation E has always covered the Electronic Funds Transfer guidelines for any financial institution. With new regulations stating that consumers must opt in if they want overdraft protection, banks and credit unions are scrambling to figure out how to replace the fees that were previously generated by overdrafts.
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So you’ve decided to set up a Twitter account for your financial institution, but you’re not sure how to go about it. Making the leap to social networking requires a dedicated staff and marketing savvy to make it succeed. Just starting it up without considering the frequency of posting, content or legal disclosures can get a financial institution into trouble.
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Income tax rules will probably change substantially in 2010. If Congress takes no action, taxes will rise substantially in 2011 when the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 expire. Expect a great deal of press coverage and consumer anxiety as they try to understand what this may mean for them.
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It’s difficult for many financial institutions to raise awareness in the community, especially in cities where there are dozens of competitors. One excellent way of raising awareness is to get involved in the community through charitable service. Showing the community that your financial institution cares by getting involved in their issues and positively impacting their world will not only provide a great outcome for the region that you serve, it will help to raise awareness of your business.
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Looking at 2010, there are some very significant indicators of how the world and markets will trend. The recession has thrown a kink into goal-setting based on historical data, so in order to predict what will happen in 2010, it’s important to look at the following indices: cash flow, housing market, and government.
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According to a recent study by the financial service strategy firm Mercatus, LLC, mobile banking users are a significantly growing segment of the population. In fact, one in five consumers are using mobile banking, and most of these users are of the younger generation.
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With the economy starting to show signs of turning around and consumers gaining more and more confidence with the market, it’s time to look at mortgages. Have consumers learned from the mistakes made only a few years ago, or have they gone back to spending the way they used to?
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The housing and financial market collapse has continued to affect more than just the economy. The uncertainty that these economic times have brought upon the world has caused many financial institutions to scratch their heads this fall as the next fiscal year’s budget cycle comes due.
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In July, the government began the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009 (CARS), which the media immediately dubbed the “Cash for Clunkers Program.” Consumers would receive either $3,500 or $4,500 on a trade-in of their old vehicle toward the purchase or lease of a new vehicle that had been approved by the program.
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Two years ago, Glen Lazovick made a point of visiting his credit union’s branches and doing something radical: He talked to the tellers.
It was one of the best decisions the newly hired senior vice president of lending at Mid-Atlantic Federal Credit Union ever made, he said.
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Helping its members learn the basics of financial literacy is something of a passion for the staff at Meriwest Credit Union in San Jose, Calif.
Its financial education program – which teaches classes on everything from credit myths to personal budgeting to retirement investing – is so popular that nearly 3,000 members have participated since its launch in 2007, said Community Relations Manager Gregory B. Meyer.
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In a world with few universal truths, one remains unchallenged: Men and women are irretrievably different. That is especially true when it comes to their financial lives. Most financial institutions would agree that their female customers have different needs than their male counterparts. The only question has been how to address those differences.
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The buzzword in marketing right now is customization. Creating a direct mail or email that has the ability to change photos, colors, text and names based on what the marketing team knows about that person through the use of variable data printing has been on the forefront of marketing for years now.
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“Employees are a company’s greatest asset.”
“Hire great people, smarter than you, and get out of the way.”
Statements like the preceding are only too appropriate when it comes to applying them to sales teams. But how do you find these great sales people?
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At Cornerstone Community Financial, there is such a thing as a second chance. To help people who do not have financial accounts, the Auburn Hills, Mich., credit union recently launched its Fresh Start Checking. Its goal is to allow the unbanked population become members of both the credit union and the American Dream, said spokeswoman Stephanie Leahy.
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They Tweet. They text to distraction. They love technology. And they expect your bank or credit union to feel the same. They are the Millennial generation, or that age group generally considered to be born between 1985 to 2004. And this highly demanding group of consumers is both a boon and a challenge for financial institutions eager to capture their investment dollars.
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It is the kind of phone call Michigan First Credit Union President and CEO Michael Poulos loves to get. His daughter called from New York City, bragging about the new, amazing automatic teller machine at her local bank. The ATM deposited her check and returned a scanned image on the receipt. Poulos laughed, he recalls, and reminded his baby girl that his credit union had been doing the same thing – for more than five years.
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Even with a crystal ball, it would be difficult for anyone to tell exactly when the housing crisis will have hit the bottom. As consumers have lost confidence in the financial industry, it’s become more and more difficult to overcome their aversion and skepticism. In the past, consumers wanted lines of credit as if it were a birthright.
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It is unfortunate, but is has become fairly common for many financial institutions to have customers that are struggling to hang onto their homes. Financial institutions have acted by developing new programs in order to offer assistance to these consumers. Governmental officials have also put some new initiatives into place in order to improve the situation.
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What effects are we seeing in today’s credit card industry as a result of the current economic conditions? Another question in many minds is what trends might we expect to see in the future?
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Consumers wary of the economy and uncertain of the future of the nation are taking the safe road and deciding to save their money. In light of this recent trend, many banks are moving to provide incentives to bring in new customers that are interested in secure savings that will increase their funds.
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You’ve always heard that it costs 5 to 7 times more to get a new customer than it does to cross-sell your products to an existing customer. It seems like this is true, but have you ever run the numbers to prove it? Probably not!
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