This series of posts will outline the sessions at the 2008 Partnership Symposium.

Session Speaker

Gene Blishen, General Manager, Mount Lehman Credit Union

Session Overview

Still not sure how to best tackle mobile banking or are you looking for alternatives to enhance your current offering? Gene will share valuable member and product information his credit union has gained over the past three years, discuss various aspects of mobile banking and service options, and talk about different approaches for implementing mobile banking (do-it-yourself, vendors, partnering, etc.). Gene concludes with thoughts about “harnessing the wisdom of crowds” and the concept of innovation coming from multiple outside sources and how to ensure your credit union is receptive to these sources.

Session Notes

Below are some of my highlights from Gene’s session.

We decided that if niche retail shops could exist to compete with Walmart and CostCo, why not a niche credit union?

Any technology we implement must have a human element, otherwise we won’t do it.

We build things in house because it allows us to be creative.

The difference between push and pull: Pull conditions are established and that system operates in batches. Push conditions are established by a member and when that condition is met, the message is pushed, in real-time.

Because we develop things in-house, we can listen to our members’ feedback and tweak our products accordingly.

We call all of this mobile banking, but there is not one specific definition.

The highest percentage of MemberNote (SMS alerts when transactions are complete) users at Mount Lehman are aged 41-55.

Mobile banking gives you another method to touch your members.

Next for Mount Lehman is web-based ATMs, chip cards and smart phones.

Innovation is:

• Establishing the right culture.
• Failures creating successes.
• Everything that your core processor isn’t.