David Libby is president and CEO of Town & Country Federal Credit Union, Maine’s largest in terms of members. Today it has 122 employees and $385 million in assets. In this Q. and A. interview he talks about some of the credit union’s initiatives and how they advance the goal of gaining younger members.
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David Libby is president and CEO of Town & Country Federal Credit Union, Maine’s largest in terms of members. Libby started as a branch manager in 1990 when Town & Country had 18 employees and $26 million in assets. Today it has 122 employees and $385 million in assets.
Libby sat down with Mainebiz at the credit union’s operations center in Scarborough for an interview, excerpted below.
Mainebiz: What’s your membership growth strategy?
David Libby: While we love growing, we’d like to focus on how to connect with the greater communities, to build more sustainable and impact-driven economies. One example is our recovery program, where we’ve identified financial needs of those in [drug and alcohol] recovery. We’ve discovered that people getting back on their feet need help with finances because they haven’t had credit or even earnings, and so we have a financial-literacy training program they go through. Our newest campaign is a $1 million challenge to help our members build emergency savings accounts, because most people have less than in $400 in emergency savings.
MB: Are more young people becoming members?
DL: We attract quite a few younger members. Our average age at one point was 48. That’s dropped down to 40, and we’ll get to below 40 in the next few years. We’re quite a bit lower than the average for Maine credit unions and lower than the banking industry as a whole.
MB: How did you manage that?
DL: A big part that drives our growth and interest from a younger demographic is our technologies, and the ability to offer very innovative solutions. Our mobile app is the No. 1 rated in the state for credit unions and banks, and one of the highest in the nation. We were also the first credit union in the country to enable Alexa [Amazon’s voice-activated virtual assistant], in 2017.
MB: And the response so far?
DL: It’s been fantastic, and Amazon is now rolling that out to more financial institutions. The provider that we worked with to generate that tool is rolling it out to 500 banks and credit unions sometime [in June].
A big part that drives our growth and interest from a younger demographic is our technologies, and the ability to offer very innovative solutions.
MB: What’s next on the tech front?
DL: There’s a lot, but I can’t disclose what. Obviously voice is going to be the future. If you look at science-fiction movies — “Star Trek,” “The Matrix,” “Back to the Future” — you can see some forward-thinking ideas.
MB: Is there an advantage to being first with a new technology?
DL: We spend a lot of time around the country seeing what’s trending in different industries and thinking about where society is heading. We then try to meet the challenge head on. It’s not about being first, it’s about learning first.
MB: What was the last branch you opened and what’s next for this building?
DL: We opened Forest Avenue in 2011 and then our operations center in 2014. We are building the other half of this building starting in late 2019 or early 2020. We’ll add another 20,000 square feet so that we can add staff as we grow and build out additional services.
MB: You plan to hire 20 people this year. What are the hardest jobs to fill?
DL: We haven’t had a lot of difficulty. We advertise to some degree, but it comes from word of mouth and different resources that we have, especially the fact that this building itself attracts a lot of people.
MB: What services are you expanding into?
DL: Mortgage services, and more loan products to help people in the beginning phases of their lives or that are in apartments. We just started a pet loan, for instance, to help with things like emergencies, illnesses and adoptions. We will also be working with new Americans employed at American Roots, for whom we’ll be holding financial literacy classes and offering products and services to try to meet their everyday needs. A lot don’t have credit history established here, so we’re looking at resources to help with that.