Episode 82 - Guest Ronaldo Hardy Shares How His CU Worked to Eradicate Poverty in their Local Community

In this podcast episode, Meredith Olmsted, CEO and founder of FI GROW Solutions, sits down with Ronaldo Hardy, President and CEO of NACUSO, to discuss a groundbreaking initiative he led at Southwest Louisiana Credit Union. Ronaldo shares his journey of certifying all credit union employees as financial counselors, delving into the transformative impact it had on staff, members, and the broader community. This episode unpacks the “why” behind the initiative, the process involved, and the invaluable lessons learned from this bold approach to financial empowerment.

Key Takeaways:

• Comprehensive Financial Empowerment: By certifying every employee as a financial counselor, Southwest Louisiana Credit Union ensured that all staff members were equipped to assist members and the community, creating a seamless and supportive experience for all interactions.

• Empowering Employees Internally: The certification process not only benefited members but also equipped employees with deeper financial knowledge, enabling them to manage their personal finances more effectively and extend advice to their families and friends.

• Community Impact and Growth: This initiative helped the credit union rebuild its reputation, foster trust within the community, and achieve remarkable growth, with a 70% increase in asset size over five years.

Transcription:

Meredith Olmsted:
Hi there. I am Meredith Olmsted, CEO and founder of FI GROW Solutions. We are a digital marketing and sales consulting agency and we work exclusively with banks and credit unions, and I have quite a treat here with me today. So we have a guest podcast member. We usually have people who are on our team, but today we have a guest and his name is Ronaldo Hardy. Ronaldo is the president and CEO of NACUSO. And I wanted to give him a chance to introduce himself and then we're going to be talking about why it's important or an endeavor that he went through with a credit union that he used to lead in creating a lot of certified financial counselors through his employees and the benefits and how he did that and how that really positively impacted everybody involved. So Ronaldo, say hello and just introduce yourself really quickly.

Ronaldo Hardy:
Yes. I'm Ronaldo Hardy, president and CEO of NACUSO, which is the National Association of Credit Union Organizations. I have been in financial services for 22 years now, 20 of those in credit unions so I've been around for a little while. As you mentioned, I've gotten an opportunity to lead credit unions. I've been, like you, a consultant for about four years, one of the owners of strategic planning, and now I'm in this role helping to accelerate the transformation of our industry through the scaling of solutions that really help us to grow and move forward.

Meredith Olmsted:
Yeah, yeah. CUSO's are amazing and they bring a lot of great new technology and expertise into the credit union space and kind of help, I think definitely help credit unions become a little faster in their new adoption of new technologies and approaches. So nice to be able to chat with you Ronaldo.
And so the question was, so I saw you speak last month, or I guess it's two months ago now because it just is November, but in Hollywood at our Mac conference. And you mentioned in that presentation that when you were the CEO of a credit union down, I think it was in Louisiana, one of the things that you did was you made it a priority for all of your credit union employees to become certified financial counselors. And that is not just the loan officers. That was literally every member of your staff. So I thought that was absolutely amazing when you mentioned that and that was one of the things that I decided I thought we should really unpack on our podcast. So we're going to talk just for 10 minutes or so about this. So just really quickly, how, well, I guess I can say why did you decide to make that a priority and then how did you accomplish that? What went into it? So I guess the why and the how first.

Ronaldo Hardy:
Yeah. So at Southwest Louisiana Credit Union, we had undergone this transformation where we changed our vision and mission. Our vision became eliminating poverty in our community. So we really wanted to focus on that and we wanted financial empowerment for all. And we had undergone a few different things to help us to get that, to realize that vision. So we really study strategically what's necessary to get people out of poverty cycles and then we did some things with our staff to make sure they understood the type of consumer that we would be impacting.

But our team, as we were kind of putting our heads together and saying, "Okay, how are we going to live this out?" One of the things that was really important to me is that no matter who a member interacted with or even a person in the community, because a lot of times we're out in the community, our logo shirts on, I wanted to make sure that we had the information, the knowledge and the tools to help people get out of difficult financial situations no matter what.

We've all been a part of processes where we call an organization and we say, "This is my problem," and it's like hot potato, who can I pass you on to next? And then finally after 10 transfers, or maybe if you're in the physical facility, after talking to several people and finally walking down the long hall to the awkward room in the back, we finally get one person who can help us. And to me, that just really was not living out the brand well and delivering on our position. So I really wanted members, I wanted people in the community to be able to get a solution no matter who they interacted with. And that created a different ownership in buy-in amongst our team.

Now, I know you talked about, okay, what did it take to do that and what was our process like? We were a team of 50 at the time, and I remembering correctly, about 12 of our employees had already been certified at that time. And we had this process just kind of sprinkling in one or two, and then we would have people who were recertifying. And in this particular year that we said, "Oh no, we're going to go all in," we decided that the 38 employees that still needed to be certified to include myself, were going to go through the process. And it was nearly a thousand dollars investment for each employee that we had to do that for. So we spent about $38,000 to make sure that employees were certified, and we used the program that our league had, I think it was tied to CUNA as well. So it was a partnership between CUNA and the leagues, and that's the program that we used to do it.
When we first sent it in the league, they were like, "Hey, we kind of think, did y'all mean to send us 38 registrants?

Meredith Olmsted:
They're like, "This is the typo. You meant to sent three or eight or something like that, but not 38."

Ronaldo Hardy:
Literally I believe that just our staff alone represented more than half of the counselors that went through program that year. So that's how shocking it was that we were going to do that, but we were that committed to our culture and our vision so we did what it took.

Meredith Olmsted:
So it took a few months. Was it virtual? Was it in person? How did that work?

Ronaldo Hardy:
So first they sent us the materials to study. So there's study materials. There's a really big, big binder of information that you have to go through, and then there's a test that is proctored and onsite to do it for us. Initially they were thinking, okay, typically they would have everybody come into one place in order to do that from a state perspective. But because of our specific scenario that they actually end up coming to us, we set up a testing center and they proctored, we took it and I think in that first round, maybe 90% passed the test right away and the other 10% had to retake it and they ended up passing it and we were a hundred percent certified.

Meredith Olmsted:
Fantastic. I think that's amazing. I think that the one thing, so it's funny, when we do brand work with clients, the one thing that I think a lot of times people are always thinking that these kinds of projects or endeavors are really about benefiting the members. We really want to make an investment so we can give better service to the members. We can do something, accomplish something for the members. But then sometimes you forget about the internal policies and procedures that have to support translating whatever that value is to your staff members as well.

And so I think the example I think of is if you're giving back to the community in some specific way, say it's environmental impacts or something, and you want to give volunteer paid time off to your staff so they can go and volunteer with an organization, that's a similar thing. But so in this case, it's like you want to address poverty in your community, but in order to do that, you're also addressing financial wellness of your staff because even though they're learning how to be a certified financial counselor, had to have benefited them too. I mean, they all were getting more, the financial benefits of them learning how to better manage their own personal finances probably helped them just as much as any member, right?

Ronaldo Hardy:
Absolutely. It was very impactful to them. And we had employees who said that, that they were happy that they went through the process because it gave them a deeper knowledge of certain aspects. It's very interesting to be in financial services and to work around money and to really know some of the ins and outs and still have those same struggles that other consumers have. And by us educating our staff in that way, we armed in with the tools and the resources necessary to be thoughtful about their own financial journey. So that was absolutely one of the outcomes that we saw as a result of it. And our staff was they were very, very appreciative that we had done that.

Meredith Olmsted:
Yeah, that's awesome. And it helps their kids and their families and friends. They're probably giving advice to everybody around them after that, so that's awesome. What about members? How did that benefit your members? And I assume the members eventually were finding out, oh, every member of the staff of the credit union is a certified financial counselor, but what were some of the things that you saw? Were there ways that you saw it really impact members, anecdotal impacts or overall to the membership? Tell me a little bit about that.

Ronaldo Hardy:
So we did promote the fact that we had done that. And I will tell you, it helped us a lot because when I went to the credit union, there were some brand reputation risk that had [inaudible 00:09:32] true issues. I think we were outside of risk into actual outcomes around the brand reputation. And so there were some things that we needed to rectify that there and we did a lot of work that really connected with the community. One of the things that was in addition to this is I did what was called Facebook Live with the CEO. So I would go live every month and talk about [inaudible 00:09:54] welcome questions from them, and we really tried to make sure we accelerated this top-down transparency so that they knew that no matter who they interacted with, they could get the truth. This was an extension of that as well.

Meredith Olmsted:
Oh, nice. Yeah.

Ronaldo Hardy:
Really know that not only am I going to get actual factual true information, but also to end up in a scenario where you could get assistance no matter what. And I think it helped us to live out the mission very well. It accelerated the growth of the organization. I've been gone for five years now. My successor stepped up. He was my COO at the time. He stepped up, took on that role, and in five years the organization has grown by 70% in asset size.

Meredith Olmsted:
Oh, wow.

Ronaldo Hardy:
Heard of.
Meredith Olmsted:
Yeah, that's large.

Ronaldo Hardy:
So thinking about this pathway that we committed to, it really gained the trust and the buy-in of the community. Our members were able to see that we really meant what we were saying, and no matter who, they stopped to talk to somebody, whoever they got a hold of had the ability to help them.

Meredith Olmsted:
Very, very cool. Did you all see poverty in the community also positively impacted? I mean, because that was really your bigger goal, right? Was to eradicate it really. I mean, it's a great vision because you're not going to play around. You're not going to reduce it. You get rid of it. I love that.

Ronaldo Hardy:
Yes. So I don't have the exact numbers on what it has done. I'm certain my successor has more information now because of where we were on the journey at the time. But what I will tell you is we were able to do some dynamic work around that vision to include, we were able to create a coalition of all of the entities in the community that served an aspect of that target consumer for us. So we recognize if someone was in a poverty cycle it's not just a financial problem. They probably have a problem with access to food and healthcare. And if they decide to become a first time home buyer, they probably need an IDA and things like that to help them. And they probably engage services like United Way. So we built a coalition so that all of our front door became a front door to all of us. That was one thing.

Meredith Olmsted:
Fantastic.

Ronaldo Hardy:
 And then we designed a product through our CDFI grant. So we became certified and we put a grant in place. Well, we got a grant. We put a product in place because we saw what was happening in the market concerning some jobs that were vacant, earning about 80 to a hundred grand a year. And then there was this audience that they were earning about $20,000 a year, and all that was missing was this skills gap in the market. And the crazy thing, Meredith is that it could be resolved with six months of education from the local technical college. So we were able to develop a product that was a quasi student loan, kind of

Meredith Olmsted:
Yeah, nice. Bridge that gap, get people trained for a new opportunity, and then all of a sudden they're making four times their annual income that they were.

Ronaldo Hardy:
That's what happened.

Meredith Olmsted:
That's amazing.

Ronaldo Hardy:
And we blended their unsecured and secured debt together in an interest only loan for the six months that they were in school. They actually didn't start paying principal and interest until they got their new job. And because we knew child care was a barrier, we were able to put child care vouchers in that grant program to allow for them to gain access to that education so that they could get that higher employability. So those were the types of things that we were able to do to really live that out. And we gained the buy-in of the community all the way up to the mayor's office. So when they decided, even after I left, about a year and a half or two after I left, they decided that they wanted to put a small business development center in an area of town that's disadvantaged. Well, the first partner that they called to be in that building, Southwest Louisiana Credit Union.

Meredith Olmsted:
Of course. That's fantastic. Awesome. Absolutely great stuff. Any mistakes you made that you would do differently in hindsight?

Ronaldo Hardy:
So I'll tell you this in hindsight, there was another certification program that we could have done. We were so familiar with what the league was doing and CUNA at the time that we were not aware of this other certification program. It's actually one that was designed by CU strategic planning of which I ended up going to be a part of that ownership team for a while.

Meredith Olmsted:
Gotcha.

Ronaldo Hardy:
And what I liked about it is you could license the platform and then all of your employees get access to it. So even as employees are leaving and coming, they still have access to the platform because when you think about whenever you do deal with attrition and you're onboarding new staff, you still have to make that investment all over again. I wish that we would've evaluated that because we actually would've saved some money, but I would still do it all over again. 38,000 was an investment that was worth it for me.

Meredith Olmsted:
And the benefits are going to carry through generations years to come even if they are leaving and moving on, even if you have staff leaving and moving on to another opportunity within the community, they're still taking that know-how with them so that's awesome.

Well, thank you so much for sharing, Ronaldo. I really appreciate your time today. It's so good to see you again. If you all want to learn more about digital marketing, our sales, our service consulting for credit unions or community banks, please visit us at FIGROW.com. We have lots of other great blogs, case studies, we have lots of other podcasts on all of these topics that you might find useful, and otherwise, let's just all get out there and make it happen.