Ranking among the top ten in greatest potential for membership growth according to NCUA data, First Florida Credit Union in Jacksonville, Fla. is taking a two-pronged approach to managing growth.
According to third quarter 2016 call report data, the $811 million credit union has nearly 12.7 million potential members, putting it in 9th place on the list.
According to CEO Brent Lister, the CU already has a physical presence in most of Florida’s biggest metropolitan areas, including Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville and Tallahassee (Tampa is the major exception), and the CU’s recently implemented five-year strategic plan is focused on deepening relationships with existing members while also picking up new ones through social media and digital marketing.
First Florida also has relied on partnerships and mergers to grow, with five mergers in the past 10 years and growing from $100 million in assets to $800 million in assets over the last 13 years.
“We’ve used partnerships as part of our growth strategy, and that has added branches and members in strategic areas,” he said. “Last year we merged Florida Baptist CU which was looking for a partner. It fit our model and our strategic plan, and we got almost 2,000 new members through that partnership …and those 2,000 new members already knew what a credit union was, so that’s super.”
That merger will also allow any member of a Baptist congregation in Florida to join the credit union.
Moving forward, the $811 million-asset credit union plans to continue that strategy in instances “where there’s a value proposition for the two credit unions to partner and add value,” said Lister. These days, he added, CUs must look for those sorts of opportunities since the old days of growing though SEGs are over. Consumers, he said, are looking for institutions with a national or regional reach, not necessarily ones tied to their employer.
First Florida is also focusing on young professionals and kids as a growth strategy, he added, out of a belief that it’s much more difficult to gain a consumer’s business if it involves convincing him to bring his business over from another institution.
