MANCHESTER, N.H. — People in New Hampshire's largest city have the same financial worries they've faced for decades: buying a car, saving for a house, paying for their kids' education. Local credit union CEO Ken Senus, who runs St. Mary's Bank, has different concerns.
St. Mary's already knows how to serve members. What it's trying to do now is fight for their attention and business, while
A major structural challenge credit unions face is that they're promising a better level of service, when younger people, whom they need to grow their membership ranks, prefer do-it-yourself banking, said Mary Beth Sullivan, managing partner at Capital Performance Group, a financial-institution management consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.
As a result, credit unions need to "rebalance their strategy a bit towards growth and away from service, which sounds brutal," Sullivan said, including shifting toward hiring employees who are good at sales. "You have to make sure it's clear why you're a better choice than other institutions."
The fraud fighters
While he's highlighting those reasons to potential members, the CEO of $1.5 billion-asset St. Mary's constantly thinks about cybersecurity, fraud and theft issues, he said. "You try everything you can to keep them away," Senus said of the effort his team puts into stopping scamsters. "Knock on wood, it's worked so far."
The litany of issues that the credit union must guard against would be familiar to any CEO who runs a retail financial institution. Senus is wary of ransomware, which hasn't hit St. Mary's yet. Scam emails are another problem.
ATM shimmers, physical devices that get around the security features in chip cards, are a growing issue. "That's an oldie and a goodie" for many credit unions, said Carrie Hunt, chief advocacy officer for the America's Credit Unions trade association. "It had gone away for a while and is back again."
Every morning, a staffer inspects each branch and ATM on foot. The credit union is looking into adding more cameras to catch people loitering by the ATMs, Senus said.
Cyber scams are increasing across the financial world, and they're difficult to fight despite "some really sophisticated mechanisms to combat fraud," said Curt Long, deputy chief economist at America's Credit Unions. "Instead of an email to send money to Nigeria, it's the phone call from an AI-generated call that sounds exactly like your family member."
The problem is that putting up roadblocks for scammers helps protect customers but also makes their experience less seamless. "We don't want to make it too difficult" for credit union members to use their own accounts, Senus said.
As fraudsters get savvier, credit unions across the country are struggling to stay ahead with better technology. "AI adds an interesting component where credit unions, like all industries, are trying to keep up with bad-actor AI," said Ben Maxim, chief innovation officer at Michigan State University Federal Credit Union in East Lansing, Michigan. His institution just added voice biometric authentication in its call center to help reduce fraud there.
Going digital
St. Mary's has also been increasing its digital footprint in recent years. Five years ago, the credit union went through a digital conversion to Alkami Technology, upgrading its mobile app and online banking system to switch away from a vendor that wasn't doing enough updates, he said.
(At the time, St. Mary's Credit Union in Massachusetts, which isn't affiliated with St. Mary's Bank, got so many incoming calls from confused customers of the other institution that eventually its customer service agents started giving out tips on how to work through app and website problems, Senus recalled.)
The app gives credit union members the table-stakes features banks typically have: account aggregation with other financial institutions, mobile check deposit, financial wellness tips and product offers. It's steadily adding new features including, most recently, credit scores. The goal is to become a member's "primary financial engagement," Senus said: "The more services we can offer them is what matters."
That's typical of credit unions, the trade association said.
"The cost of doing business for every single credit union in the country, even the large ones, has really gone up in the last few years," Hunt said. "Digital banking, cybersecurity implementation, qualified staff to implement that level of product delivery."
And once a credit union has those capabilities, it has to market them again, Sullivan said.
"There's often a general belief that they won't have the digital capabilities I need, and sometimes that's not true," she said. "You've got to overcome that and challenge it if you've built a robust digital banking platform. That alone keeps folks from moving."
The physical side
Simultaneously, Hunt said, an aging member base still wants to go into branches, so credit unions can't cut costs by closing locations.
While Senus expects customers will want to do many transactions on the app, he thinks they'll still prefer to get advice in branches. Over the next year, he plans to open a branch in Concord, the state capital, and one in the beach town of North Hampton, adding to the existing 13 branches. It's part of a balancing act between the new and the old: Although the credit union no longer issues account passbooks, members who have them can still use them — and do.
St. Mary's members tend to want different things from the credit union depending on their age bracket, he said. Baby boomers and Gen Xers, who hold the largest accounts, are seeking higher rates on their deposits. Millennials want mortgages and loans for cars and college tuition. The youngest members, who belong to Gen Z, are trying to buy their first cars and open credit cards. For these up-and-coming customers, and others with lower credit scores, the credit union has a rainy-day savings account and a credit-builder program.
After the banking crisis of 2023, the question of why customers would choose a regional or community bank or credit union and risk seeing their institution fail hung over the industry.
Senus said the credit union's community roots are what persuade customers to join: "We're local. We have that local presence." St. Mary's keeps its customer contact center right in Manchester, so members who call are speaking with their own neighbors.
"They start off with national banks, but they get fed up because they can't get an answer," he said.
The credit union touts its personalized service to differentiate itself from larger and national competitors. "We work with the members; we try to understand them" when they apply for loans, rather than using numbers to approve or deny their requests, Senus said.
If the credit union denies a loan application, the member can appeal to the credit committee and even the board of directors. Many loans are granted on appeal; others are referred to government agencies or nonprofits that can help the member, he said.
A long road
Senus came to St. Mary's in 2017 from Navigant Credit Union in Rhode Island and took over as CEO last year. He said he is well aware of his institution's role in local and national history: "We recognize our place in the history of the credit union movement."
From his corner-office window, one can see up the hill to the church of St. Mary, or Sainte Marie to the original French parishioners, many of whom came here to work in textile mills on the banks of the Merrimack River that are now being turned into offices and condos.
The church founded the credit union in 1908. Just down the street sits Catholic Medical Center, founded by the same parish. Housed in the credit union's original building up Notre Dame Avenue, in the other direction, is
This sort of volunteer involvement also works as a signal to potential customers that a credit union and its executives care about the community. While that's not a pitch that tends to attract younger members, "the service angle" could help attract local nonprofits and small businesses, Sullivan said.
One trending wave Senus doesn't plan to surf: buying a bank. He's thought about it, but for a credit union, which doesn't have stock, to purchase a bank — as
Avoiding expensive distractions is part of a decades-long pattern of "smart decisions" that predate him, to which he credits St. Mary's century of longevity. Among these, Senus cites term limits for board members, which allow the credit union to tap local attorneys, CPAs and other professionals, rather than simply descendants of long-ago bigwigs.
"The board is very determined to be here for the long term," he said.
