Thing 18 of 30: lay claim to being first at something

By Tim McAlpine

September is 30 things I would implement or consider implementing at my credit union if I was a credit union leader.

Thing 18: lay claim to being first at something

The credit union industry is better known for its conversative nature than being a group of pioneering innovators. On one hand, this has allowed credit unions to remain safe and sound in times of trouble, but on the other hand, it has also created a group of undifferentiated vanilla organizations that tend to follow instead of leading.

At my fictitious credit union we would concentrate on being first at something. Something radical and new. Something that no other financial institution has done to date.

An example of this kind of outrageous behaviour is premiering today. St. Louis-based Vantage Credit Union has just become the first financial institution to offer banking through Twitter! Here's the introductory tweet for Vantage's new tweetMyMoney service.

What I love about this innovative first is that people will have two reactions. 1. "Wow, that's awesome!" or 2. "OMG, that's stupid!"*

Here is some info from the simple mobile-friendly landing page:

We're excited to introduce the first-of-its-kind banking service via Twitter, available exclusively to Vantage members! View balances, move money and much more using tweetMyMoney.

• Choose to get balances on one or all your deposit accounts
• Get your 'last 5s' on one or all deposit accounts: deposits, withdrawals, checks cleared, transactions
• See what point-of-sale transactions are holding in your checking account and their dollar amounts
• Avoid overdrafts by making transfers from one deposit account to another... on the fly!

Congratulations are in order to the Vantage Credit Union team. I suspect this service will not only be popular with tech-savvy members, it will also attract more new members than producing yet another me-too deposit campaign.

What could you credit union be the first to do? That's the question I would spend time thinking about!

*Actually, those are the two reactions people have about Twitter!

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Comments

1) Morriss Partee @ Sep 28, 2009
http://everythingcu.wordpress.com

Darn it, you beat me to blogging this huge and innovative break-through! Guess I can't claim to be first to blog this event now! But I will do it anyway. :)

2) Credit Union Warrior @ Sep 28, 2009
http://creditunionwarrior.blogspot.com

"What I love about this innovative first is that people will have two reactions. 1. 'Wow, that's awesome!' or 2. 'OMG, that's stupid!'"

I agree...and that's why I love this.

3) Matt Fagala @ Sep 28, 2009
http://www.vcu.com/blog/matt

So true Tim. We have been seeing a lot of interesting comments today. Both positive and negative. The amusing thing is that most of the negative comments seem to come from the people not using Twitter (and many admit, I don't get it...). Did you catch the Slashdot article? (http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/09/28/1646257/Banking-Via-Twitter). A lot of cranky geeks on there... ;-)

4) Jeffry Pilcher @ Sep 28, 2009
http://www.thefinancialbrand.com

There's something very eye-catching about this website... http://www.myvcu.com/

This one is quite nice too, but in a different sort of way... http://www.vcu.com/

Note to Tim: Check your hyperlink on Vantage ;)

5) Tim @ Sep 28, 2009

@jeffry - yeesh - note to Tim: check your hyperlink on Vantage ;) Fixed. If that was a credit union website, it would definitely classify as a first!

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