since 1935 | #justbeyourself

Volume 6 | Issue 1 | January 2023
Our Mission: Providing financial solutions for every stage of life.

Dear Valued Member,

Self-improvement resolutions at the start of a New Year often focus on things like eating better and exercising more. Efforts to improve physical health are great, of course, but financial health also impacts your overall well-being. Finding ways to reduce debt, increase savings and lower taxes can help improve your financial picture both today and for the long term. Plus, knowing that you have a solid financial plan can reduce stress and benefit your physical health as well.

Setting goals isn’t only for individuals, either. Here at Community First we also take stock of how well we’re serving our members and resolve to improve whenever and wherever we can. In the second part of my letter this month, I’m going to share a commitment that Community First made — and kept — in 2022.

Planning to succeed in 2023

First, however, I’d like to make two suggestions for our members as we start the New Year: one is to set aside time to review your finances and look for opportunities to improve financial security, and the second is to visit our moveUP Financial Wellness online platform for guidance and tips. We’ve been steadily building the platform in recent years, and last year we added several new “playlists” of topics that can help you manage your money more effectively.

One of the new playlists covers investment topics, everything from getting started and stock market basics to evaluating risks and understanding cryptocurrencies, which is especially timely. Other recently added playlists provide information on financing higher education and managing healthcare finances. The moveUP platform allows you to select the videos that pertain to your individual needs and create a customized playlist that you can review at your own pace. For even more personalized and comprehensive financial planning, you can schedule an appointment with one of our financial advisors.

As part of Community First’s commitment to helping members live their best lives, we’re constantly evaluating economic trends and anticipating how we can help you respond to them. Last month, I wrote about how we’re helping you earn more on your savings by offering some of the highest interest rates on money market accounts and certificates of deposit in our market. Indeed, our deposit trends are showing that many of you are taking advantage of the higher interest rate climate by increasing your savings balances held at the credit union.

We have also seen that many members have successfully paid down debt, as historically low interest rates made saving less attractive. One consequence of this has been improving credit scores, which may provide opportunities for individuals and families to borrow money for needs like home improvements that they had been putting off.

Finding the right balance between saving for the future and borrowing for the present is a vital part of financial planning. Right now, even as we’re seeing opportunities to capture the upside of rising interest rates by locking in medium and long-term rates on savings, members can also take advantage of interest rates on loans that remain below historic norms. One borrowing option that’s especially attractive to those who have paid down their mortgage balance is a home equity loan or line of credit, which typically has a lower interest rate than other types of loans.

All of these factors, combined with your individual needs and situation, will be important to consider as you make your financial resolutions for 2023.

Improving Member Satisfaction

The importance and effectiveness of setting goals at the start of a New Year was brought home to us at Community First in 2022, when we resolved to improve our customer satisfaction scores. We use a system called the Net Promoter Score, which is the gold standard of customer experience metrics, to measure how we’re doing through member surveys conducted three times a year.

The NPS surveys tell us what you think of our service and enable us to identify opportunities for improvement and create action plans to address them. This work is the responsibility of our Member Experience Committee, which we have continued to expand to involve a broader cross-section of credit union departments.

In addition to reviewing the NPS data, the Member Service Committee looks at all of the hundreds of comments made by members as part of the surveys. We even reach out directly to some members to ask more about their experiences and how we could have done better.

It was as a result of this intense focus over the past year that we took actions such as cutting in half our non-sufficient funds fee, making our members’ automatic paycheck deposits available a day sooner, and boosting the interest we pay on deposits. We also enhanced our digital banking platform, increased contact center staffing and improved our training programs to enhance employee knowledge.

I can now report that our final NPS score for 2022 was nearly 10 percent higher than it was at the start of the year. For anyone who knows something about customer satisfaction scores, that’s a big increase, and it has reinforced our conviction that listening to members and acting decisively on what you tell us is the key to meeting your needs.

Thank you for helping us meet our 2022 goals, and we’re resolved to work with you to deliver another successful year in 2023. ■