The Home Depot Breach: How North East Texas Credit Union Met the Challenge

Posted by admin on Nov 18, 2014 in CU Content, Environment, Technology | 0 comments

BY LAURA ENOCK

Data breaches make for difficult times for credit unions. There is a need to remind members of the severity of the security breach, advise them on steps to take for better protecting themselves, and reassure them that their money is still safe with the credit union. All the while, you know it’s your organization that will have to bear most of the costs connected to any data breach. Credit unions need to keep their financial future secure in order to protect their members.

With disasters like Target and, more recently, Home Depot in the news, and the possibility of more security problems in the future, how to respond to data breaches needs to be a topic of conversation occurring among the leadership team at every credit union. Having to weigh the competing concerns of member satisfaction and institutional financial security with incomplete information is a very difficult challenge to address.

This was the position that North East Texas Credit Union (NETCU) encountered after the Home Depot breach. It knew some of its debit card numbers were at risk. It didn’t know how long it would be before Home Depot released the list of compromised numbers. NETCU faced significant risk of fraud and the knowledge that it would be liable for around 80 percent of the losses incurred as a result of that fraud.

Inaction in a situation like this was not an option. After the events of the Target data breach, NETCU knew it could not withstand another round of fraud losses like it had previously experienced. It knew its membership could not afford the loss and inconvenience of more fraudulent charges.

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How Gerber Credit Union Grew Auto Loan Volume . . . By Letting Go

It’s an old problem and lots of credit unions are facing it. You need loan volume and would love to have members think of your credit union first when purchasing a car. But the competition is as fierce as it is extensive—local auto dealerships use irresistible rates for promotion, and members are offered other deals from local banks and competing credit unions. Trying to get car buyers to even consider your credit union’s rates is like shouting in a windstorm.

What Type of “Artists” Are Your Employees Trained to Be at Your Credit Union?

BY: ED SWANSON

In today’s highly competitive financial services world that credit unions are part of, training our employees to develop successful interviewing skills and how to effectively talk to the member is an absolute must. Our employees need to completely “paint’ in the picture of the member and their situation in order to not only assist the underwriter in determining the member’s creditworthiness but also in order to cross-sell other products and services to them.

Yet, in these advanced times of Twitter, text messaging, Facebook, and all of the other social medium used to communicate in today’s world, the requisite skills necessary to actually talk to someone—either in person or over the telephone—are somewhat lacking for member service employees in the credit union world.

If your credit union has a centralized lending area that underwrites loan applications, chances are that these underwriters rarely, if ever, actually talk to the member in developing the loan application. Instead, they rely solely on the member service representative or financial service officer located at the branch or in the call center to perform the following functions:

• Talk to the member,
• Ask the member the questions in order to capture the necessary information to complete the loan application,
• Input that information into the loan application platform,
• Pull a credit report,
• Type up or hand-write notes about the purpose of the loan and the story that goes along with the information that’s critical to the loan application.

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