Gen Y is a key market segment for credit unions to reach in this recession. Its members still need loans and, compared with older Americans, fewer are deleveraging. The latest CU Tomorrow brief, Chrome for Young Adults: Franchise Branching for Membership Growth explores a retail delivery concept that uses modern branching to attract this elusive segment.
Chrome is a credit union retail delivery concept that has been percolating at the Filene Research Institute for several years. It first surfaced as an i3 concept in 2005. As interest in attracting young adults to credit unions continues to grow, the early concept passed to CU Tomorrow for more in-depth treatment.
Chrome is the young adult version of a potential multipart branding system. The larger vision is to approach the financial services space in the same way a carmaker approaches auto buyers or a clothing retailer approaches mall shoppers: segmenting.
Comments
2
Wow. This is a phenomenal concept and the report is excellent. I sure hope it catches fire. After reading it, there were a couple of things that I was unsure of:
1) What the transition looks like when members outgrow the age restriction? How do they transfer to the mother ship credit union?
2) How are the franchises granted? Is it exclusive to one credit union per marketplace?
Nice work Ben!
Link to this comment
Great questions, Tim. Each participating credit union would set its own parameters about how to transition members, and ideally the transition would be a “pull” to new services and locations rather than a “push” out of Chrome. That said, in the same way the 80-year-old couple at my church drives a Scion xB (no joke) and nobody’s barring my mom from shopping at Abercrombie (though she never would), the concept envisions a place where young adults feel catered to, rather than a place where others are excluded.
Granting the franchises would be thornier and would require business considerations. The first credit unions to plunk down money to build the concept would obviously get the Chrome branches in their own market, after which the CUSO (or other legal entity that controls Chrome) would probably take applications.
That’s the good thing about concept documents, I get to write the fun stuff and leave the contracts to the attorneys.
Link to this comment