STCU: Crisis Averted
Posted by Brent Dixon on December 22nd, 2008
I enjoyed this note from Spokane Teachers Credit Union to their members:
“In the interest of full disclosure, STCU would like to announce that, in the midst of the national mortgage crisis, your credit union has had one bad home loan…[the crisis] was all over in less than an hour.”
Perhaps a little horn-tooty, but I think many credit unions have earned their bragging rights.
Read the full note here.
(via Filene’s “Does Capitalism Need Cooperation?“)
Oops. It looks like Mark goofed on the date when he said STCU recently posted this message. This is from a year ago (December 2007). I hope STCU is still in this great a shape one year later.
One bad loan—not bad. Well, depending, that is, on how many home loans they made in total. If they only made 3 loans, then, well, one bad one out of three ain’t so good, is it?
@Ron- Spokane Teachers Credit Union (STCU) is a $1 billion CU with 4,212 mortgages worth $516 million on the books.
7 out of 10 credit unions in our geographic area have delinquency rates under 1% on total loans. Does anyone know if this type of information is available for banks?
Great way to infuse a sense of humor, and personality, into a member communication! Way better than just saying “we’re safe & sound”.
Hey, we made the funny papers. Cool discussion, everyone! As editor of STCU’s quarterly member magazine, I waited seven years for a chance to use that “in the interest of full disclosure” line. (See https://www.stcu.org/mortgage_crisis.html) Every year I would ask our collections people: “We’ve got 3,500 home loans on the books, so how many are foreclosed?” And every year they would give me the same boring answer: “None.” It was an ironic twist that I finally had the chance in November 2007 to disclose that, in the midst of the mortgage crisis, we had one bad home loan. I think we’ve had a couple more since that time, but very, very few. Of course, you never win everyone’s respect for your honesty. One member complained that the article showed an insensitivity to people who were losing their homes (to the banks, I guess. It wasn’t to STCU). Another member said it showed we were too conservative with member’s money. This guy probably worked for Lehman Brothers. In recent months, with the bad-bank-loan housing crisis sucking the money
- and humor -out of the economy, we have had to resort to simply telling members that we are (sorry, Jessica) “safe and sound.” But I’m encouraged by Mark Meyer’s thesis that consumers are learning to trust credit unions during this recession. Our honesty and openness- with a pinch of self-deprecating humor -will go a long way toward earning and keeping trust with consumers for years to come.