Your apps are better, your processes smoother, your metrics stronger. But as members go increasingly digital, are you accidentally engineering yourself out of their lives?
In this episode of Grow Your Credit Union, host Joshua Barclay and co-host Becky Reed welcome Tim Schmitt, Chief Experience Officer at PFP Services, to explore why the biggest member experience mistake might be hiding in plain sight, how protection products can become trust-builders instead of payment-killers, and what’s actually driving credit union growth.
A huge thanks to our sponsor, PFP Services
You’re losing members without knowing it. Is digital killing your human connection?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your digital transformation is working so well that you’re accidentally severing the relationships that made members choose you in the first place. Tim Schmitt described this perfectly: “As members get more digital, you lose that touch with them besides them being connected there.”
This isn’t about choosing between digital and human. It’s about recognizing that most credit unions are accidentally creating an either/or experience when members need both. Becky Reed’s observation cuts to the heart of it: “They either do the in-person experience very well, or they do the digital experience very well, and generally, they don’t do both well.”
But here’s what’s really happening: you’re solving for efficiency when you should be solving for connection. Your app handles the midnight balance checks beautifully. But when someone needs a mortgage, something that will define their family’s next decade, they need to sit across from someone who understands their story, their fears, and their dreams.
The credit unions winning right now aren’t the ones with the best app or the warmest lobby. They’re the ones who’ve cracked the code on seamless handoffs between digital convenience and human wisdom. Video banking isn’t just a pandemic leftover. It’s the bridge that lets you scale intimacy.
Protection products aren’t sales pitches—they’re the missing piece of financial wellness
Stop positioning protection products as expensive add-ons. Start positioning them as the insurance policy for every financial plan you’ve helped a member build. Tim’s framing is spot-on: “Protection products are the missing piece of someone’s financial wellness plan.”
Think about it: you spend months helping a member budget for retirement, save for their kids’ college, build an emergency fund. Then life happens and that entire plan collapses because the income stream disappears. Every dollar you helped them save gets consumed by the very emergency you could have helped them prepare for.
Becky’s approach at Lone Star Credit Union was genius because it eliminated the psychological barrier entirely. Instead of “Your payment is $300, but for $400 you get protection,” they said “Your payment is $400, and that includes all the protection you need.” Same economics, completely different member experience.
Here’s the strategic insight both hosts emphasized: if you’re not explaining these benefits to every member, you’re doing them a disservice. Protection products aren’t about generating fee income. They’re about protecting the member relationships you’ve invested years building. When you pay out a $25,000 life insurance claim to a grieving spouse, you’re not just delivering on a product promise. You’re demonstrating that the credit union exists to support members through their worst moments.
What’s actually driving credit union growth in 2025?
While the industry obsesses over digital disruption and fintech competition, credit unions are quietly winning the war that actually matters: consumer lending. And it’s not even close.
Becky’s insight reveals the massive strategic opening: “The banks don’t really want to do consumer lending for the most part. They really would prefer, and they do it quite well, the business lending.” Think about what that means. The largest financial institutions in America are essentially surrendering the individual consumer market because the margins aren’t fat enough and the relationships are too complex.
This is your moment. While Chase focuses on commercial loans, you’re perfecting the auto loan for the teacher who needs reliable transportation. While Wells Fargo chases corporate clients, you’re creating specialized mortgage products for healthcare workers and local government employees. Tim emphasized that this success comes from deep community knowledge: “A credit union down in North Carolina, they just know their industry, they know their people, they know their members.”
But here’s the growth challenge no one wants to talk about: your message isn’t reaching the people who desperately need what you’re offering. Tim’s reality check should concern every credit union CEO: “I know my son doesn’t know a credit union that well. His friends have no idea.”
You’re sitting on the most compelling value proposition in financial services and somehow an entire generation thinks you’re just “some union that helps you get good credit.” This isn’t a marketing problem. It’s a strategic communications crisis.
The credit unions that will dominate the next decade won’t just serve their communities better. They’ll tell that story so compellingly that young professionals actively seek them out. Because here’s what Becky understands: “Gen Z, in particular, is looking for a place where they can make a difference, and credit unions are it.”
Takeaways
- You must architect experiences that seamlessly blend digital efficiency with human wisdom, not force members to choose between them.
- Protection products generate trust dividends that compound over decades, not just fee income that shows up this quarter.
- Consumer lending is your uncontested competitive advantage while banks retreat to commercial markets.
- Your member ownership story could be your greatest differentiator if anyone under 50 actually understood it.
- The claims you pay today create the brand advocates who will drive growth tomorrow.
Full Transcript
Joshua Barclay: Today on Grow Your Credit Union, there’s a subtle mistake that’s quietly eroding member trust. Do you know what it is? In the next segment, we’re digging into protection products, not exactly new or revolutionary, but still one of the most overlooked products for building trust, loyalty, and long-term member growth.
Finally, we’re going to give you a coast-to-coast view of what’s actually driving credit union growth in 2025, and what major opportunities are being missed. Let’s start the show. Welcome to Grow Your Credit Union. This is the podcast where credit union leaders gather, learn, and grow. I am your host, Joshua Barclay, and with me is my co-host, Becky Reed. Howdy, Becky.
Becky Reed: Howdy, y’all.
Joshua Barclay: All right. Before we begin today’s show, I want to first mention our sponsor, PFP Services. You will hear more about them later in the show. Becky, 4th of July, this was the first time I’ve ever had my house on a 4th of July.
So just moved into my house in January, and did not know people line up in front of my driveway because I have such a good spot for fireworks. I’ll tell you, a lot of cigarette butts in my driveway the next morning. Just saying, maybe some beer cans too. But I will say I had a really good 4th of July. My dog did not enjoy it whatsoever. She was frightened. But great 4th of July nonetheless. What did you do, Becky?
Becky Reed: So my husband and I… So we have a house on wheels, right, that we travel with. It’s called an RV. We went out to the lake. The good thing was, sitting on the lake, we could see fireworks shows all around the lake. So if other cities or towns or whatever were having their fireworks show, we could see those from the lake, which was really cool.
But there were no fireworks allowed in the actual park, but we thought that maybe people wouldn’t be rule followers, and we would see some fireworks in the park, people who were brave, who weren’t going to follow the rules, and you know what? Those RV people are rule followers, man. Nobody had any fireworks.
Joshua Barclay: Well, that’s kind of a bummer, but people were not following rules in front of my house. But it felt very American to wake up with 16 Bud Light cans in my driveway. It felt rock and roll, so I’ll take it.
Today’s guest, Becky, is brought to us by our sponsor, PFP Services. We’re excited to welcome him. He’s been championing the Credit Union Movement now for over 20 years. Tim Schmitt, the Chief Experience Officer at PFP Services. Tim, welcome to the show.
Tim Schmitt: Thank you for having me. Looking forward to this.
Joshua Barclay: Tim, you work with credit unions of all shapes and sizes, each with their own member base and challenges. So what I have to know is, what is one mistake you see credit unions making when it comes to member experience, and what would you recommend they do instead?
Tim Schmitt: The biggest thing that I see is really losing the human touch with a member. Just as a member gets more and more digital with them using the app, going online and doing that, your member that’s been here for a while, you don’t have contact with them.
You lose that touch with them besides them being connected there, and you don’t have that face-to-face, the…and I’m calling face-to-face either over the phone or seeing them in person in the lobby at the sites. That’s the biggest thing that they are missing.
So if credit unions could do anything, you sort of have to connect the two, and still have that digital scale that you need to have to grow your credit union, but you still need that human touch to allow the trust to grow, to allow to keep the member there for a longer period of time.
Face-to-face is so important, that eye contact, even if it’s video. Video’s become very important in this whole thing, that you can have that one-on-one, that you don’t need to be actually in the room.
Joshua Barclay: Becky, big mistakes credit unions are making with member experience. Do you second what Tim says? I know you’re very digital first, so I’m always so curious about your take on how we meld the two, the idea of the in-person with the digital. Do you agree with Tim, or do you feel like, “No, there’s a completely different member experience issue afoot here.”
Becky Reed: No, I do actually agree with Tim. I think that the challenge is that credit unions do one of those two very well. They either do the in-person experience very well, or they do the digital experience very well, and generally, they don’t do both well.
I would say that credit unions do the in-person probably better than most, and the digital experience generally is lacking. So I agree totally with what Tim is saying, but it really does come down to member experience. So he’s the chief experience officer, right? That’s his job to focus on that end user experience, and that is very important.
I think it’s skewed, though. People come in person for different things than they do when they go to their digital platform. So it needs to be a different experience, actually.
Tim Schmitt: Yeah, I agree with that. When you’re talking about a mortgage, you’re talking about something that’s of higher…or less known about, they need to have that in-person face-to-face. But little questions that you’re up in the middle of the night, checking your account balances or what you’ve last bought or sold or whatever, you can do that, those are easy to do.
The real experience that you want to have with someone coming in and opening up account, that’s so important to have, because then you find, you find out their why, of why they’re doing it, why are they taking out this mortgage, why are they taking out this loan, what do they need to have? It’s so important to know why that person is becoming a member and doing what they want to do with the credit union.
Joshua Barclay: Becky, you said something that I think is very true, which is that, typically, a credit union gets one of the two right. Either they have a very forward-thinking digital experience, or they have a great in-person, more than old-school touch. Why do you think so few credit unions can get both of those two things right?
Becky Reed: Because I think we’ve been doing the in-person stuff for a lot longer. So credit unions, we’ve been around, banking institutions, branches have been around for years, and years, and years. You mentioned earlier that Tim has been helping credit unions for 30 years. I’ve been in credit unions for 30 years, but credit unions have been the consumer choice for in-person transactions for, gosh, five decades probably, maybe even longer than that.
So we know how to do that well. What we don’t know how to do is build software. We don’t build software. Credit unions don’t build software, so we buy. When we buy, sometimes the integration doesn’t go well. We don’t vet the end user experience well, that experience doesn’t change very often, and we’re not integrating tools.
So Tim mentioned some things I think were interesting about a mortgage, and asking those questions, and getting to know the person. Well, AI can do that pretty well now, too, and can give that data to a employee at the credit union that may not be actually talking to that person face to face. So I think that, in general, credit unions just don’t do digital well.
Joshua Barclay: What are your thoughts, Tim, about that? They don’t do digital well. You mentioned maybe credit unions, even though we’re good with the in-person touch, that maybe a lot of them are still missing the boat when it comes to the in-person touch. What specifically have you seen with the in-person member experience sort of motion that you’re like, “Ugh, we’re still not getting that quite right.”
Tim Schmitt: Well, the part that I would say, with the digital part, is that you need to blend the two, and that’s the hard part, and I think that’s the challenge that credit unions are having is, “How do you blend the two together?” Because some people don’t want to be spoken to every day. They want to just be able to do their research, be educated, and learn about things on their own, and then self-select on what they want.
So to the point that you were asking me, I just think it’s the credit union movement. It’s people helping people. That feeling that you get when you sit next to someone, and you know about their family, you know what their children are doing, their grandchildren are doing. That’s the part that makes credit unions so unique, and that other financial institutions don’t really even care about.
That’s what’s going to make them special, and that’s what’s going to allow them, I think, to grow, but you have to merge that with digital. It has to be digital somehow. That’s, like I said, if that’s video, if that’s sending them any type of content about a mortgage or about protecting your family, that bringing the two together I think is what’s going to stand out and make one credit union better than the one that can only do face-to-face.
Joshua Barclay: Protection products don’t always get the spotlight. They’re not exactly a new product. They’re not exactly innovative. Hey, they’re not exactly sexy, but I do think they can play a big role in deepening trust and loyalty. Tim, what have you learned about the right protection strategies when it comes to protection products, that can actually drive growth for credit unions, not just revenue, but real member impact?
Tim Schmitt: The biggest part, the way how I talk about it, is, protection products are the missing piece of someone’s financial wellness plan. They can do a great job saving. They could do a great job budgeting for their expenses, saving for retirement, saving for the children’s education, whatever that is, be able to pay when you have your refrigerator, having that $500, $1,000.
But if someone gets sick, gets hurt, you lose a loved one, that plan goes up in smoke because that money earner’s gone, or is injured, or cannot work. So this really allows that product to be completely… Nothing can break it. You do a good job spanning years and years developing your plan, so you can retire or whatever your goals are.
If you did get hurt and couldn’t work for six months, you have a disability policy. If you did get a critical illness and you had to get an operation, you don’t have to take money out of your retirement to be able to pay for that. It’s really a great thing that just makes it so much better connecting the member back to the credit union too, they can have all one program right there at the credit union.
Joshua Barclay: Becky, we’re thinking about protection products, and it’s not really something you and I have really spoken about much. But do you think protection products, in some way, are the cherry on top, the sticky relationship-building product that you can then expand the member relationship from?
Becky Reed: I don’t look at it as a sticky product personally. I think the loan itself is a sticky product. I think that the way I look at it is similar to how Tim described it, and one of the things that we would tell our employees at the credit union was, “If you are not explaining the benefits of these products to every single member, you are doing them a disservice.”
So it’s not about selling something or making a spiff or whatever. It’s about understanding… This goes back to what Tim was talking to earlier before too, about knowing the member, knowing who it is you’re talking to. I think that it’s important to understand the needs of the member, and you know what? Maybe a disability product, for example, isn’t for them.
I don’t know. Maybe you know their situation, they work for a particular SEG group, has an amazing plan, they’re a firefighter or something. Maybe that’s not the best product. But maybe GAP is, or maybe medical insurance is the best thing, or maybe… I mean, it could be a myriad of different things, and at credit unions, we oftentimes offer many, many things for the member.
So by not explaining to them the benefits of what we have to offer, that we know are going to be the best thing for them… I mean, that is why they come to us. Now, yes, that brings loyalty, and that brings trust. I never looked at it as a sticky product, like, “They’re not going to leave because we did such a fabulous job at selling them protection products.”
But I think that another thing that credit unions don’t do well is give the employees who are selling these products and offering these products to our members, an opportunity for the member to say yes instead of no. So the reason why you probably didn’t want to hear that stuff is probably the same reason I never wanted to hear that stuff, right?
I’m like, “Look, stop trying to sell me a bunch of stuff that’s going to cost me a bunch of money. I just came in here, I dropped a ton of money buying this stupid car that I wish I didn’t have to buy because my last car broke down.”
So I’m already ticked off about that, and now you’re going to tell me… “I had to put a down payment down, I’m a little ticked off about that. So now you’re going to tell me you’re going to increase my payment by 100 dollars so that I can…just in case I get sick, I… No. The answer is no.”
So one of the things that we made sure that we did at Lone Star was, it was all included in your payment. “Look, here’s your payment, and guess what? That includes all the protection that you might need. We have debt cancellation protection in case you get sick or you lose your job. We have GAP insurance to make sure that your car is in an accident, you don’t have to pay the residual. All of those things, that’s all included. All included.”
The member’s like, “Wow, it’s all in there, and that’s the payment that I wanted in the first place? Done. Done.” So I think what makes it hard is, first of all, the employees aren’t looking at it as being a disservice by not offering it, and two, we make it challenging for them to sell it because it makes the payment go up.
Joshua Barclay: Becky, what you said about not articulating these products the right way is a disservice to the member. I know one of the things that you’re big on, Tim, is telling the story around these products, telling the personal story around these products. So do you feel like there is a disconnect with the credit unions you work with from the way their employees may articulate these products to how you do it with PFP in particular?
Tim Schmitt: Exactly what Becky said. The challenge for the employee is to see that, because they just see it as the insurance person, they’re just raising costs, they’re talking to them. I used the same exact words Becky said when I was selling. It’s a disservice by not talking about insurance, not talking about a protection.
I like the way how she put it together because all her team was doing, the way how I saw it, is you were educating your employee about that product because you added… They could have taken it off, but you said, “Hey, this is what this is going to do, and this is going to help you if something happened to you.”
That’s the way how I see it. It’s all about educating the member, making what’s best for them. They can make the decision or not. It’s not being forced on them. You give them the education, you’re talking about it, you show them…you tell them the stories. That’s the big thing is telling that story of what happens if you do get hurt.
We had a member that called us. Their house was going to go under because they lost a loved one, and they couldn’t afford the payments. Those are stories that you need to tell, and you need to explain, and that’s where I see is the disservice, part of that. When you’re able to explain that story to someone, and they’ll be able to tell their friends, their families. It feels so much better to them to offer it and say, “Yeah, this is… Why didn’t I think of this earlier?”
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Tim, you are in a unique position because you work with credit unions across the country, and you get a front row seat to what’s working and what’s not. From your vantage point, you’ve seen the pain points, the innovation, the untapped potential, so let’s zoom out for a second. What’s working right now when it comes to credit union growth?
Tim Schmitt: I think the big part is being part of the community, emphasizing that, being out in the community, doing that if they are community-based, showing what they bring back to the membership, really understanding the mission of that credit union, and the way how it pertains to that.
I think being smaller financial institutions allows them to be able to do that, and for their members to get a feeling that they’re part of this, that they’re part of the mission of what they’re trying to achieve with it. I think if they keep going strong with that, and they keep recognizing that, I think that’s going to be a big part in helping, especially with the younger generations.
They want to grab onto something. They want to make a difference in something. I think that’s what credit unions do, but they need to get that message out clear because I know my son doesn’t know a credit union that well. His friends have no idea. They don’t know what that does yet.
I think they really need to do a campaign to allow that to grow because they’re going to have… They’re so much smarter than we are, they’re going to have so much more money, and then inheritance and so on and so forth. This is a perfect place for them to go, and to be able to grow it and build it themselves.
Joshua Barclay: Community engagement and, yes, the youth…I mean, every young person is looking for something to stand behind, to stand for something. I agree with you 100%, Tim. Becky, credit union growth. Tim mentioned the community component, I wholeheartedly agree. What is your take on what is working right now? You’re talking with credit unions all over the place, you’re on the road constantly. What is driving growth right now?
Becky Reed: I think that we, as a industry, do a better job with lending than really anybody else. I think that, that goes back to Tim’s comment around understanding the community in which you serve, because credit unions have tons of very niche lending products that are built just for the communities that they serve, whether it be SEG-based or whether it be geographical community-based.
In auto lending, we talked we talked about this on a show not long ago, we are losing a little bit of market share there, but that’s just really because rates have gone up, so things are a little more competitive.
But really, the banks don’t really want to do consumer lending for the most part. They really would prefer, and they do it quite well, the business lending, which we’ve talked about before, the big commercial loans, they do quite well. So they serve their communities differently than we do. We actually serve the end consumer, the single consumer that needs that car loan or needs that house.
So the way I’ve seen a lot of credit unions grow in this new era of increased higher rates is lending. They do just a fantastic job of lending. Some of them do a great indirect, they have a lot of indirect, which helps a lot of people. I got my car loan indirect through a credit union. So I think that we do that better than anybody else, and that’s how I’ve seen a lot of credit unions grow here recently.
Joshua Barclay: Tim, what do you think? Becky just dropped a lot of bombs on there. Just a lot of good information, Becky, particularly around the point of, banks, yeah, you’re right. They don’t want to do consumer lending, and the fact that the way we do lending is very personalized, it’s community-based, it’s SEG-based, that gives us such an opportunity.
Tim Schmitt: A credit union down in North Carolina, they just know their industry, they know their people, they know their members, they know what they’re looking for. So like what Becky says, they’re good at it because they understand their members and what they want, and then they try to create a product for that.
It’s different than what one of the top five banks is looking at. They’re just looking at the overall picture. They’re not looking at that member, how it’s going to help that one SEG, or that one community of what they can bring in.
That could be a uniform loan or whatever, based on what it is, and no one’s giving that out, but the big commercial banks are not giving out uniform loans or anything like that, and these are the people that need it, the people that are living paycheck to paycheck and they do a really, really good job at doing that.
Joshua Barclay: One thing you said, Tim, that I think, Becky, we should highlight, we said it before on the show, is we’re probably not doing a good enough job, as an industry, to project our message onto the youth, or really project it to anybody.
We talk about the youth a lot, but I could grab a 40-year-old off the street, and they probably won’t know what a credit union does either. Do you think that we’re moving in the right direction when it comes to sending the right message, or do you think we’re completely ignoring Tim’s point altogether?
Becky Reed: Well, again, we have talked about this before, so I’m sure that what I’ll say, our listeners will not be surprised, but we do a very poor job, as an industry, of really explaining that you own the credit union, and when your direct deposit goes into the credit union, your neighbor gets an auto loan.
We don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about that, and we don’t include young people often enough in our board governance. We should have them as board advisors at the very least. Many people have longtime board members that don’t want to get off the board or… I mean, because they enjoy it. But let’s bring some advisors in to start talking about these things.
Also, we tend to skew older, right? The average age of our members is late 40s and getting into the mid…all the way up to the mid-50s. We’re not catering and we’re not providing products and services to people my son’s age, who wouldn’t even understand what a credit union is, probably if his mom didn’t work at one for almost her whole career.
So it’s hard to be all things to all people. I get that. I get that, but we have to do a better job of telling our story as an industry because you are absolutely right that Gen Z, in particular, is looking for a place where they can make a difference, and credit unions are it. So we’re missing out on an opportunity to educate them if we’re not speaking to them.
Tim Schmitt: Yeah, I think that the big part that they’re missing is what credit unions really have to offer. You offer a lot of great products, a lot of great things that they’re getting at say the big banks compared. You have those products, you have good things, they just don’t know, they’re just thinking old school, “That’s just a place that you put…you save and maybe take a loan out.” But there’s a lot of good, other things that they can take advantage of that they just literally have no clue about.
Becky Reed: Well, and our name doesn’t help. I think credit union is an old-fashioned name. I was just talking to somebody, a millennial who’s in their 40s, to your point, Josh, and they were like, “I always thought the credit union thing was like some union where it helped you get good credit.” So our name is hurting us a bit, too.
Joshua Barclay: Tim, we actually had a guest, our co-host, James McBride, actually. He was co-hosting with me, and we discovered, midway through the show, that he was a customer of PFP. So I’ve heard a lot about the work now that PFP does.
You’ve been on the show multiple times. You’re doing some really unique work in the credit union space. So for folks who might not be familiar, can you share about what PFP Services does and how you’re helping credit unions create more value for their members?
Tim Schmitt: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is to understand what we’re passionate about. We’ve been in business for over 50 years. We’re passionate about engaging, protecting, and educating credit union members and their families. It’s a very simple thing.
That’s what we get up in the morning to do. It’s not easy because people think that insurance is a four-letter word, and it really isn’t. When you hear the stories and you… We’re talking about minimal policies, we’re not talking about big policies, talking about… Our average policy is $25,000, $26,000 of life insurance, but we paid out $62 million into that last year to credit union members.
That’s a lot of policies that are being paid that these people would not be getting served because no one wants to sell a $27,000 policy via insurance agent. We found a way how to do that, and get them a product that’s almost frictionless. It’s very easy for them to get.
The part to the credit union that we do is that we tell their message to the credit union member. If it’s in the lobby, if it’s at the SEG group, if it’s over the phone, we’re doing outbound calling. We want to talk to your member. We want to tell them your story that they might have forgotten about, or to hear about a new product that you have to offer.
It’s also by using data to make sure you’re not just doing the old messages of throwing enough on the wall and see what sticks. We use data, we use life events, we use certain things that they have credit cards, what would be the next product to offer them when you’re doing outbound calling?
So we’re really constantly reaching out to the members, telling them the message of the credit union. Maybe we have to do this more with the younger generation, that we were just talking about, so they get a better understanding of all these different products. But it’s a simple idea that has a great impact on the credit union industry.
Joshua Barclay: You mentioned something, too, which is that it’s not just about the products. You basically become an army, if you will, that works on behalf of the credit union, is that right?
Becky Reed: Yeah.
Joshua Barclay: It’s not just products. You’re going on the ground. You’re working in the field, basically, on their behalf.
Tim Schmitt: Because most of the time, especially when it comes to the data and information, credit unions have it, but they don’t have the resources…a lot of them don’t have the resources to reach out, especially the small to mid-sized credit unions that we really work well with, they don’t have the ways to reach out to their members and tell them about, “Okay, here’s something that we have for you, but we can’t get to you.”
So we do that. If it’s business development, usually if they have one business development person, they’re at the credit union, they need two or three people to get out to all their SEG groups. So that’s what we provide. We provide those extra resources for them that they don’t have to pay for it, that they don’t have to do anything, and we act as one of your employees.
Joshua Barclay: What I’m wondering… So I’ve spoken now to several of your clients, John Holt being one of them. Love John Holt.
Tim Schmitt: Great guy. Yup.
Joshua Barclay: I’m a Connecticut guy, I got to love a guy who’s doing forward-thinking things for a Connecticut credit union. So many people speak highly of you. When you think about your wins in your over 20-year career now with PFP, you don’t have to give me all the details, but what is a win that really stands out to you, that you carry all the time in your mind?
Tim Schmitt: I said it earlier, the claims that we give back to credit union members.
Joshua Barclay: You said that was over 60…
Tim Schmitt: Last year was 62 million, during COVID, it was up to 65 million. That’s the difference.
Joshua Barclay: That’s huge.
Tim Schmitt: No one does that. No one does that, and we’re not throughout the whole entire United States, but no one’s just doing that for credit union members. That’s what’s important, that’s what keeps us going, and that’s what’s allowed us to be here for 50 years.
Becky Reed: You know what? Listeners, I got to say, Tim is getting emotional talking about that, guys. So his heart and soul is in this, so thanks Tim.
Tim Schmitt: They make fun of me first because I cry before I talk, which is a good thing in the long run. But that’s what we do, and like I said, it’s a simple thing. It’s a simple idea, but we were throughout the years, and we’ve done it with credit unions. That’s all we’ve done it with. Everything that we do goes back to the credit union member. That’s what I love about how we’ve done it.
We’ve developed the products throughout the years because we sell thousands and thousands of products a year. We wouldn’t be able to do this if… We wouldn’t be able to get the underwriting that we get for these members to get paid for because they wouldn’t be able to qualify for the products, and that was built over 50 years.
Joshua Barclay: That’s all you have to say, 50 years. When you do good by an industry for the way you have, you don’t last 50 years unless you’re really doing well for your clients and your customers, and you’re treating them like family. That’s something I always respected about PFP Services in particular.
Tim Schmitt: Especially in the credit union world, because if you did something bad, it gets around quick.
Joshua Barclay: Yes. Yes. Brings us to the final thoughts. We’re wrapping up the show. Tim, we’ll start with you. Final thoughts.
Tim Schmitt: It’s just really to change the mindset. You know, I’m learning stuff doing this podcast too, and I think it’s a big point that Becky brought is like, “How do you get them to be better at digital?” Which is, you have to be, but I’m thinking it as the human connection and then bringing the digital part together.
If credit unions could figure that out, growth is unstoppable. It’s 130 million people strong right now, members strong. It can double in size in the US if we’re able to do that and figure that part out, especially with this younger generation coming up.
Joshua Barclay: Tim, if people want to get a hold of you, what’s the best way someone can get in touch with you?
Tim Schmitt: They can email me at tschmitt@pfpservices.com or just go to our website, pfpservices.com.
Joshua Barclay: Becky, final thoughts?
Becky Reed: I think I want to talk a little bit about telling stories, and Tim was talking about some stories that, obviously, his company shares amongst themselves. I think that, that is so important. I think, as credit unions, sometimes we don’t tell those stories. Yes, certainly we can tell stories to members, which is what he talked about before. You know, “This member, that member, I’ve personally seen this help people.”
But within the credit union, I think that oftentimes those people who are processing the claims and paying the claims, hearing about the situations when people have to make a claim, one thing that we did at the credit union was we would share those stories. “We paid out X number of dollars in GAP claims last month. We have X number of dollars in disability payments that are being made. We had this happen, we had this happen.”
Every single month, we would report on those things so that our employees understood that these things that members are buying are really helping them, really helping them, and that makes all the difference in the world. So I think stories are very important.
Joshua Barclay: You know what? I got to ask you, Becky. How can people get in touch with you?
Becky Reed: [Laughs] LinkedIn, baby.
Joshua Barclay: I know. I know the answer, but I got to ask. All right, Tim, I want to thank you for coming on the show. Becky, I want to thank you for being the greatest co-host and one of the great ambassadors of the Credit Union movement. I got to thank our sponsor, PFP Services.
Then obviously, I got to give a special thanks to you, our listeners, for continuing to support and listen to another episode of Grow Your Credit Union. If you like the show, follow us on your podcast player of choice. If you want to be a guest or you would like to talk about sponsorship opportunities, head to growyourcreditunion.com to learn more. Thank you for listening. We will see you next time. Take care, and bye-bye.
