Research Reports
Research is our middle name. Dig in! Below is over 20 years’ worth of research helping credit unions survive, thrive, and solve problems for consumers.
The research behind this report asks the question: What makes a good credit union leader good? In early 2012, 22 of Canada’s 30 largest credit unions participated in this study of leadership and results. The study included the collection and analysis of 485 leadership surveys, as well as growth in membership...
View presentations from the International Symposium on Measuring Credit Union Performance, held May 10, 2013 at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. The symposium examined the future of credit unions. With the rapidly changing regulatory, payments and capital environment, what does it look like? Given this environment, what types...
In 2013, auto sales are creeping back toward pre-recession levels (2012 ended with 14.8 million units sold), which is helping credit unions bolster lending. The expanding market also opens up opportunities for growing market share. By unit volume, auto loans are still the largest piece of US credit unions’ lending portfolio. This research was designed...
This report is the result of a collaboration between the Filene Research Institute and Credit Union Central of Canada (CUCC). It aims to introduce the context, challenges, and nuances of serving immigrant communities. The report is broken down into four chapters. The first outlines demographic trends of the immigrant populations in Canada...
Ideas can come from anywhere, but it is more interesting to see where ideas are going. In this round of i3 we present seven new concepts for your credit union—five of which have the potential for full market implementation in the near future. Typically, an i3 concept has a 15% chance of making it...
Professor Daphne Rixon surveys the key performance indicator (KPI) practices of two dozen medium to large credit unions, and she uses that analysis of KPIs to imagine what credit unions should be measuring. Most credit union managers are, so devoted to their established and well-considered KPIs that they don’t stop to imagine what metrics are...
The creation and delivery of products and services to people are at the core of any business. As dumbfoundingly simplistic as that sounds, developers and decision makers often overlook, or make assumptions about, the very people they’re serving as they design for them. Design thinking refers to a set of methods and...
In this report, Lerzan Aksoy, PhD, draws on a new tool—the Wallet Allocation Rule—to investigate how credit union managers can do a better job of translating high member satisfaction levels into improved share of deposits. The findings of the research by Dr. Aksoy and her coauthors with regard to the satisfaction and NPS...
At the Filene Research Institute, we believe if we provide credit unions access to bright talent, quality research, innovative ideas, and tools for real-world application, then we enhance insight and knowledge of consumer needs, enable the sustainability of the cooperative finance model, and ensure hardworking people have access to an...
A few years ago, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans woke up to a new problem. On one hand, the organization had built itself into a high-performance Fortune 500 company, grown membership to more than 2.5 million people, consistently received (and still receives) many of the highest possible ratings in financial services,...