A smile and friendly greeting boost customer loyalty (even on the phone)
How often have you heard, “It’s the little things that matter”? And how easy is it to forget that these days, when it seems everyone is looking down at their smartphones and exercising their thumbs instead of interacting in a personal way?
New research from Kingston University bears this out. A study of over 2,000 consumers found that a small and friendly hello made nearly 60% of them feel more loyal towards the small businesses they dealt with. At the same time, three out of five consumers said they were willing to pay more for a product or service from a small business rather than a large corporate entity.
More than a third of consumers studied said they kept coming back because of excellent customer service, and one in five say they valued the fact that businesses remembered their usual order—but only a fraction of businesses studied kept records of prior orders.
Although the researchers focused on consumer behavior, the lessons learned here easily apply to the B2B world. The takeaway for sales professionals:
To set yourself apart, capitalize on your ability to provide highly personalized customer service— and do it with a smile, not with impersonal technologies.
Source: www.sciencedaily.com
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14th Annual Special Olympics Maine Golf Tournament
CU Insurance Solutions along with our subsidiary Equinox Financial & Insurance Services will be holding our 14th Annual Golf Tournament on Thursday July 21, 2016.
This tournament is our largest fundraiser for Special Olympics Maine and will take place at Spring Meadows Golf Club in Gray, Maine. Tee off will be at 9:00 am with a “Shot Gun” start. Registration is from 7:45 am to 8:45 am with a continental breakfast available, sponsored by Equinox Insurance. We will also be providing a bag lunch for each golfer and a post-golf reception. Please come out, have some fun and help support Maine Special Olympic Athletes and their families!
Registration fee includes:
- Green fees
- Golf cart
- Continental breakfast
- Bag lunch
- Post golf reception (cash bar available)
- Mulligan (Maximum 4 per team)
Click the link below to download the registration/sponsorship form to register today!
Registration Form
Thank you for supporting Special Olympics Maine!
Fall University of Lending with Ed Swanson
CU Insurance Solutions is gearing up for our semi-annual University of Lending event to take place on October 3-4, 2016 at the America’s Credit Union Museum in Manchester, NH. This unique 2-day educational session will be presented by Ed Swanson who is a 30+ year veteran of the financial services industry. Ed has spoken at more than 35 Credit Union Leagues throughout the country on a variety of lending and member service related topics. The lending school topics will include; Building a sales culture, Incentive programs, Cross selling as well as many elements from Ed’s acclaimed University of Lending curriculum.
Ed will focus on real-life experiences that your lending and collections staff encounter daily with your members. Come join us and let Ed’s expertise and passion help you to increase net yield on your loan portfolio, increase fee income and meet the needs of your members in challenging economic times.
Who Should Attend?
This informative session is designed for CEOs, executive management, lending managers and loan staff.
To request request registration information, contact Barbara Christy at bchristy@insurancetrust.us or complete the contact form below.
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How Do You Measure LTV?
Do you divide amount financed by MSRP or NADA Clean Retail? If it fits in your grid then loan is approved?
Most of us don’t have the time or expertise to calculate the “real LTV”. We do, however, recognize that MSRP doesn’t usually reflect the true value of a new car due to incentives and other market factors. And, unless we get pictures and do a full inspection on used cars, can we really be confident it qualifies as clean?
These are just a couple of the factors that can make LTVs misleading and sometimes lead us and our borrowers into a false sense of security. We are well aware that vehicles experience significant depreciation as soon as they are driven off the lot. In many cases, however, when we use artificial values as the basis for our LTV calculations, the vehicle experiences significant depreciation even before it is driven off of the lot.
To illustrate the issue of misleading LTVs, our partners recently paid a GAP claim of $7,568 on a 2014 Chevrolet Impala that was financed new at 94% LTV and was totaled 18 months later. It would have been easy to assume that this vehicle would have been “above water” by this time and to even have dismissed this loan as having much need for GAP since they put a couple thousand dollars down, but that would have been a big mistake. If you are making a loan with an LTV of greater than 80% LTV then there is a good chance that they could experience a deficiency balance and benefit from GAP.
Originally Published by Frost Financial Services | www.frostinsure.com
5 Credit Union Data Breach Management Tips
Article by: Adam Levin
Originally published by: Credit Union Times
Identity theft has become a rite of passage for both enterprises and individuals. For credit unions, making the right decisions about breaches and identity theft can protect reputations and save time and money better spent on growing the world of possibilities for your members.
A wrong decision can mean extinction.
Credit union members often enjoy a huge advantage over customers at larger financial institutions because of the member-centric way you do business. A great way to enhance member acquisition and retention efforts, as well as build goodwill, is to provide free access to meaningful credit and identity theft education, transactional monitoring programs and high touch resolution services. While your competitors in the banking world offer like services to their customers, few – if any – provide them at no cost. In fact, most charge a great deal for monitoring products that are long on bells and whistles and short on services. Just ask the OCC.
That said, your competitive advantage and goodwill can vanish, and the financial viability of your organization be jeopardized, if you don’t adequately secure member and employee data or fail to respond to a breach with urgency, transparency and empathy.
Here are five ways your credit union can add value for your members, as individuals as well as stakeholders, by minimizing risk, monitoring systems and having a proper damage control program in place.
1. Identity Theft Education
While identity theft really no longer is an “if” in any respect, too many people still don’t believe it is the “when” crime. You can add serious value for your members, and better protect your community, by providing tools and content, and teaching personal information hygiene. The victimization of any employee or member can provide a gateway for an identity thief into the organization thereby exposing all stakeholders to losses. The better you educate your members to the warning signs of identity theft and the personal and community dangers inherent in victimization, the more inclined people will be to say something if they see something and understand what it is.
2. Monitoring and Damage Control
In a world awash in data due to unwitting or purposeful over-sharing on social networks and breaches that have exposed more than one billion files containing personal identifying information to hackers and identity thieves, the ability to quickly detect victimization and have access to a dedicated fraud expert can mean the difference between an unpleasant personal experience and a life disrupting event.
Credit union members have jobs to do and families to raise and support. They have neither the time nor the expertise to know what is happening to their data as it flows through the cyber-sphere or what to do in the event that they are compromised.
In order to protect each member, as well as the community, you should provide access to credit and public records monitoring programs, as well as a damage control program (even if the victimization didn’t originate within credit union), at little or no cost. If the goal is to protect the member and defend the community, then you need to offer a holistic solution with fraud experts who work to resolve all identity theft issues and not just those flowing from a compromise of your credit and debit cards.
3. Digital Risk Management
The barbarians are at the gate. There are bots and scoundrels running 24/7 scouring the hills and dales of the Internet looking for a crack or crevasse through which to slither and when they find it, woe betide whoever – or more to the point, whatever – happens to reside there.
A value-add for all of your stakeholders is to engage outside experts to test your existing battlements (both technological as well as human) and find the weak spots before the bad guys can exploit them. This also involves review of your compliance and training programs.
4. Breach Preparedness
More than 800 million records were breached last year alone, and that number is growing exponentially every day. The best time to have prepared for that inevitable breach was yesterday, but today will have to do.
There is nothing like a data breach to make your day-to-day business grind to a halt. Even if your team is completely up to speed on all the possible pitfalls that open up like hungry maws post-breach – damage to brand erosion, loss of business, potential lawsuits – there is a lot to navigate in the way of regulations and compliance.
Many states have laws in place that dictate when and how an institution must notify people who have been affected by a data breach. They vary from almost non-existent to super stringent, with Florida leading the way with the most on-point rules.
While regulators require credit unions to have breach response plans in place, having a comprehensive plan and being able to implement it from muscle memory are two very different things.
A value-add for all of your stakeholders is to proactively retain the services of an expert organization that can help you to professionally, urgently and transparently respond to a breach. Work with them to design a plan to quickly provide comprehensive notification to state and federal authorities and affected members and employees, effectively interact with the media and smoothly implement a customized solution that responds to the type and level of compromise rather than simply offering a knee-jerk credit monitoring solution.
5. Breach Resolution
There is a critical difference between call center operators who read scripts that tell frightened members what to do after a breach is announced and fraud center experts who help potential victims with fraud alerts and credit freezes and do the work to restore credit and reputations.
It is a stakeholder value-add to find the right high-touch resolution organization, and much wiser to retain that identity theft solutions provider pro-actively rather than reactively.
Along with death and taxes, you can pretty much count on a breach and identity theft, or an identity-related crime, happening at some point in the cradle to grave continuum – its evolution over the past decade moving from weird aberration to pandemic to third certainty in life. Properly educating your members, helping them to monitor their credit and transactions, providing access to fraud resolution experts, testing your defenses, preparing your credit union for the inevitable breach and responding with urgency, transparency and empathy when the unthinkable occurs will contribute mightily to the security of the community and lessen the likelihood that a data compromise will result in an extinction level event for your credit union.
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Employee Benefits: Broker vs. Carrier Consolidation
As with every small employer group, credit unions are not exempt from the challenges of providing affordable health insurance options for their employees and families. Additionally, the ongoing changes under the Affordable Care Act have made it vastly harder for HR managers to clearly state what their healthcare plans provide in a way that’s easy for employees to understand. These challenges, paired with the recent message from auditors and legal counsel suggesting credit unions consolidate third-party vendors for both member and employee programs have made it more important than ever for credit unions to understand the difference between employee benefits broker and carrier relationships. Our goal is to provide some clarity on the subject as well as highlight the resources that are presently available through CU Insurance Solutions to help reduce the administrative burdens of third party carrier/broker relationships.
Broker Consolidation
Consolidation of benefits brokers means that you will simply have one point of contact who can handle all of your benefits needs. This allows your credit union to be covered by multiple insurance carriers (or companies) with plans that best fit your insurance needs and budget. Having a single broker also means that one call or email is all that you need to enroll new hires, change addresses or dependents, or terminate employees. Your point of contact can also confirm which coverages an employee is enrolled in, answer questions regarding claims that sometimes cross between coverages, such as medical and disability insurance and can alert you of any gaps in coverage.
Carrier Consolidation
Consolidating your employee benefits plan with one carrier (or company) for your medical, dental, life, disability, EAP, and voluntary coverage doesn’t necessarily make financial sense. The reason being that most carriers specialize in or have better networks or service in different types of insurance. Another consideration is that consolidating your benefits with one carrier could leave your credit union in a tough position in the event that a carrier decides to exit the market on a particular plan or you become dissatisfied with their service or claims handling. Although many coverages tend to pair together, for example dental and vision or life and disability insurance, that doesn’t mean that having one carrier is always what is best for your needs. The distinct advantage to having an insurance broker as opposed to working directly with a single insurance company is that a broker can help you navigate the various carriers at any point of change. Furthermore, a single broker can provide many options with simplified administration, so you don’t have to worry about the HR details; you can just pick up the phone.
CU Insurance Solutions Employee Benefits Facts
CU Insurance Solutions works with all major medical carriers in Maine: Aetna, Anthem, Community Health Options, and Harvard Pilgrim. We currently assist 31 Maine credit unions with their health insurance plans as well as a handful of non-credit union small business groups. We also provide credit union Association Plans to enhance your current employee benefit programs and offer employees the choice and flexibility to enhance their benefits where they are most needed to fill in coverage gaps. Most of these programs are offered at no cost to the credit union. These benefits serve as a way to help offset the expenses that most medical plans don’t cover, as well as a top-notch tool to attract and retain valuable employees. CU Insurance Solutions also offers solutions such as FSAs, customized HRAs, and Section 125 plans through both local and national partners. Our agency is happy to work with individuals, small, mid, and large groups.
Administrative Support and Resources
CU Insurance Solutions aims to not only make benefits administration simple, we also strive to keep our clients up-to-date on compliance and health care reform. To that end, we provide topical monthly email updates on health care and compliance related topics on everything from wellness, to the Affordable Care Act, to DOL compliance. We work with our partners to provide a variety of additional services including ERISA compliant summary plan descriptions, proactive identity theft help, and easy access for our clients to look into the benefits topics that most interest them.
The same reason why CU Insurance Solutions was founded in 1963 is the very reason why we turn our lights on every single day: to provide competitive insurance coverage options for Maine credit unions and their members.
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ACA Update – Let’s Talk Compliance
A Calming Info Stream
For the first time in over four years, trying to keep up with the Affordable Care Act’s mandates isn’t consuming all of our benefits energy. There are still many mandates to fill and new pieces to incorporate, but at this point here at CU Insurance Solutions we have a clearer idea of what’s coming down the pike and it’s more of a stream than an avalanche of new information. This means that there’s been time to catch up on the other benefits information.
Compliance
There are a number of new hire and annual notices that you should be sharing with employees from both Affordable Care Act and Department of Labor standpoints, and we want to be sure you both have and know what to do with them. If you are an CU Insurance Solutions employee benefits client, we will be reaching out to you soon to discuss these items. Otherwise, please check with your HR personnel, health insurance broker, or health insurance carrier to make sure you are up to date on the latest notices.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions regarding the Affordable Care Act or employee benefits.
Elizabeth Ingram
Account Manager, Employee Benefits
CU Insurance Solutions
Phone: 800-287-3379 x 312
info@insurancetrust.us
An Innovative New Program for Employees Turning Age 65
CU Insurance Solutions has partnered with Thomas Wright, a 36-year veteran of the financial services industry to offer Maine credit unions an innovative new program for employees turning age 65. Tom has recently launched “The Turning 65 Workshop”, a training program designed to guide employees approaching age 65 through the complex decisions surrounding their Medicare-related health coverage options.
Two regional workshop events will be held this May:
- Tuesday May 24, 2016 – Maine Credit Union Service Center in Westbrook, ME | 10:00 am-11:30 am
- Wednesday May 25, 2016 – Hollywood Casino Hotel in Bangor, ME | 10:00 am-11:30 am
Tom says; “For a variety of reasons, many baby boomers continue to work past Medicare’s eligibility age of 65- where they are then greeted by a bewildering maze of important Medicare-related health coverage decisions. Many employers feel unprepared to assist. I’ve observed that this process often leaves everyone feeling confused and uncertain whether the right choices have been made. The Turning 65 Workshop is designed to fill that need by providing the education necessary for these employees to make informed, confident decisions.”
David Baird, President and CEO of CU Insurance Solutions says , “We are very excited to be at the forefront of this crucial employee benefit need by offering this unique program to our member groups and their employees.”
The Turning 65 Workshop. Building a Solid Foundation for Retirement.
The Turning 65 Workshop is taught by qualified financial professionals and offered at locations throughout New England.
Save the date! Complete details and registration info will be sent to Maine credit unions soon.
The Risk of Credit Union Vendor Consolidation
Because the credit union industry is constantly on the move, it is easy to forget the incremental changes of the past that have led us to the present. New developments in technology have changed the way credit union services are delivered through online channels. As a result, we have seen increased data security risks resulting in heightened compliance and vendor regulatory due diligence. The financial services industry is being told that the more partners we have with access to our data, the higher the risk. The insurance industry has also seen prominent carriers sometimes referred to as “too big to fail” (like AIG for example) falter and crumble while other carriers simplify their focus and exit specific market segments. From the ashes of the recession rose the CFPB and a strengthened regulatory environment for all financial institutions unfortunately including credit unions. The pressure from auditors and legal counsel to consolidate third-party vendors has become a notable trend. For credit unions the result is that the cost of compliance has made it exceedingly difficult for credit unions to earn and grow. On the surface, it’s a logical solution for credit unions to consider consolidating vendors as a means to cut down the time and cost of compliance. However, when looking at product/service providers, it is most prudent to first consider the total relationship value as well as their conversion strategy. Though it may be a tempting proposition, there is an inherent risk in vendor consolidation as it concerns insurance programs for members.
Over the coming months, CU Insurance Solutions will introduce a series of articles to explore the specific insurance categories that concern Maine credit unions from both an employee and member perspective. Our focus will be to educate our partners and highlight resources that are presently available through our agency to help reduce the administrative & regulatory burdens of third party vendor/broker relationships.
A Brief History of Insurance for Credit Unions
When it comes to the topic of vendor consolidation as it concerns third party insurance providers, it is vital to understand the origins of insurance for credit unions. The provision of low cost insurance coverage options for credit union members was one of the earliest goals of the leaders of the credit union movement. In fact, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) endorsed the idea of organizing an insurance company at their very first meeting in January 1935. As a result, CUNA Mutual was formed into what became the sole administrator of member insurance services accessible to credit unions for 23 years until 1958. Additionally, only credit unions belonging to leagues that were affiliated with the national organization were allowed to sell the insurance coverages to their members.
In the late 1950s, the state leagues across America were caught in the middle of a battle that had formed between the credit unions and CUNA Mutual. Many credit unions grew resentful of what they saw as high-handed actions and uncompetitive rates due to the lack of competition in the marketplace. The situation came to a head in 1958 when the Michigan Credit Union League overwhelmingly rejected CUNA Mutual’s proposal for a new policy owner representative program, and voted to organize its own insurance agency. Many other state leagues across the country followed the example set by Michigan. When CUNA Mutual announced it would discontinue a popular disability insurance program, the Maine Credit Union League appointed a committee to investigate alternative ways that the insurance coverage might be continued. The ultimate decision was to form an CU Insurance Solutions to offer not only disability insurance, but to provide a full line of coverage options to serve the best interest of the Maine credit union community. In retrospect, the story of our past conveys a cautionary tale of what can occur when an absence of options exists.
The Truth about Vendor Consolidation
The success of a particular insurance program is ultimately based on claims experience, carrier interest, market conditions and profit for the carrier. The reality is that the vendor, insurance agency or credit union have little control over this. That is why multiple competitive options and earnest due diligence are so vitally important. Our agency has seen many instances throughout our history where a lack of options has left a credit union in a vulnerable position as the administrator of a failed program with a contractually bound sole provider without a secondary option. Additionally, tying up many services into a multi-year contract in the absence of new and competitive options can be conducive to uncompetitive pricing and options. The truth is, the free-market creates healthy competition in terms of pricing and service that is good for credit unions and their membership. Competition also creates a heightened continuous effort from your provider. We strive to have multiple competing programs for each of our product lines for this very reason.
The Importance of Competitive Options
CU Insurance Solutions is intimately attuned to the role that vendor options play as a fundamental element in the past, present and future of our agency. We were created to provide competitive alternatives to serve the best interest of Maine credit unions. We believe that providing multiple options for each member insurance program has allowed credit unions to remain protected, successful and independent. Competitive options are the cornerstone of maintaining cost effective and industry leading member services that yield the greatest overall benefits and long-term satisfaction for credit union members. In this way, when the unexpected does happen with the insurance carriers we partner with, we have competitive options at the ready. This independence has allowed credit unions to evolve with the changing needs of the movement as well as the dynamic landscape of the insurance industry.
The same reason why CU Insurance Solutions was founded in 1963 is the very reason why we turn our lights on every single day: to provide competitive insurance coverage options for Maine credit unions and their members.
The CU Insurance Solutions 53rd Annual Meeting – Save the Date
CU Insurance Solutions is delighted to announce its 53rd annual meeting that will take place at 2:00 pm on Friday, April 29, 2016 at the DoubleTree Hotel in South Portland, ME. Join us as we celebrate more than half a century of service to the Maine credit union community.
During our meeting, each Trust committee chair will report on their committee’s accomplishments during the previous year. You will also be brought up-to-date on the financial condition of CU Insurance Solutions. There will also be (1) Trustee-at-large elected for a three-year term.
As part of our meeting each year, the CU Insurance Solutions Social Responsibility Committee will be recognizing our credit union partners for their generous efforts and contributions to Special Olympics Maine. We will also present the annual Sandra A. Doucette award to an individual for outstanding service, volunteerism and support of Special Olympics Maine. Join us for a reception directly following our meeting with complementary fare and refreshments.
Educational Benefits Workshop
This year will feature a special Benefits Workshop from 11:00 am – 12:30 pm to cover three engaging member and employee benefits related topics. Tom Wright will speak about guiding employers and employees through the complex Medicare-related health coverage choices they face upon turning age 65. Kim Blier of Better Benefits for ME will talk about how you can help your credit union’s small business owner members provide better benefits to their employees. Veronica Mower will discuss how she can assist your credit union members with purchasing individual health insurance. (Contact us for flyer/registration form )
Save the date – More details to follow!
For questions regarding the CU Insurance Solutions 53rd Annual Meeting, please contact Barbara Christy at bchristy@insurancetrust.us or complete the contact form below.