What fintech should credit unions use to benefit employees?
During the Nudge, Allison and Mission Brands Gen Z webinar, a number of questions were submitted that the panel didn’t get a chance to respond to. Here, Mission Brands’ Founder/CEO Sam Plester, and Nudge’s Founder/CEO Reagan Bonlie, answer one of those questions.
What benefits are credit unions offering their employees?
SP: I’m reading this as: “What type of fintech partnerships are credit unions currently leveraging to provide benefits to their employees?” That’s a great question—and one I’m slightly embarrassed not to have a more complete response for.
What I can say is that this is the right type of question to be asking. There is a mounting body of evidence showing credit union employees—at every level, tenure, pay grade—experience the same financial challenges and inequities that members do. Of course they do. There’s no reason why that wouldn’t be the case, but it’s one of those “This is only obvious when we think about it” situations.
To that end, I’d say employees are the perfect pilot group for credit unions looking to expand or enhance their fintech partnerships in a multitude of scenarios.
Take Nudge Money, for example: What could your credit union accomplish by partnering with Nudge to guide employees on their financial journey through ’24? Or, getting back to the purpose of this webinar—attracting Gen Z members—what about piloting the relationship with new employees? Test what an onboarding partnership could look like.
Similarly, there are fintech partners like Bits of Stock or Prizeout that can overtly enhance your product value-prop.
Or even consider a predictive lending or next-best-product fintech like Stakana. Imagine running a viability study that leverages AI and predictive modeling to help your employees improve their financial wellness.
Testing within an ownable sandpit like your employee-base shouldn’t just appeal to a credit union’s natural risk-aversity, but to the marketers, too: If successful, these pilots are giving you ownable, proprietary case studies to strengthen your member-facing positioning, and solidifying authentic internal advocacy for the program.
RB: We are seeing an increasing amount of credit unions offer financial wellness benefits to their employees.
Since the CFPB report in 2016, there has been a slowly rising popularity of financial wellness benefits. Credit Unions, founded with a financial wellness mission, also recognize this opportunity to support their teams.
According to the 2016 CFPB report, employers can recognize a similar ROI benefit as medical benefits at 100% to 300%.
Get in touch to discover how Mission Brands Consulting can support your organization to identify, engage and onboard Gen Z and other overlooked, underserved members.