Creating a “people helping people” KPI for credit unions
// April 14th, 2011 // No Comments » // Credit Union, Credit Unions, Credit union business strategy, Innovation, Non-technical innovation
The credit unions I’ve worked with have all been very sincerely committed to the credit union principles that their industry is based on. The foundation of these, of course, is the idea of “people helping people.” The industry believes, in theory, that as long as they are delivering on this “people helping people” mission (and obviously as long as they are able to run a sustainably functioning business), that’s all that matters.
So, why aren’t more credit unions creating a custom Key Performance Indicator (KPI) calculation to measure their delivery of this “people helping people” philosophy? Or, why hasn’t the industry created one common KPI calculation for all credit unions to use and measure their effectiveness with? It seems to me that this KPI would be the most important number on any credit union’s management dashboard.
What factors would the formula be calculated upon? I would see it taking into consideration several criteria that would together represent a picture of what the credit union’s “total impact from people helping people” is. Here are a few inputs that would make sense for the formula:
- Number of first homes purchased by members with CU funding
- Revenue growth of businesses as a result of CU funding
- Jobs created by business member clients
- Jobs created by the credit union itself as an employer, or through the credit union’s growth (construction workers on a new branch, etc.)
- Cumulative interest expenses saved by members who refinanced with the CU
- Number of new members who were previously unbanked
- Cumulative credit score enhancement of members
This is just a starter list of the many things that could be included in this calculation to give a comprehensive view of the total impact of a credit union’s commitment to “people helping people.” Not only would this be key for management, it could also spur some great PR and word of mouth.


Jeff Stephens on LinkedIn
Jeff Stephens on Twitter