ENDWELL — “Syracuse has been a great market for us,” stresses Tyrone Muse, the president and CEO of Visions Federal Credit Union. “We’ve had an office at 500 Erie Blvd. West for a decade, and the volume has grown every year. The community is very supportive of credit unions, and we’ve … [garnered] name recognition that helps to position us for further growth. Our plan is to add two offices to accommodate the expected growth. We have already purchased a property in Cicero very near Drivers Village, and I expect this office will open before year’s end. Visions is also currently exploring sites in the middle of downtown for the second office. Each facility will contain approximately 2,500 square feet … For us, the Syracuse marketplace shows steady growth potential without a lot of volatility.”

The decision to expand in Syracuse reflects continued corporate growth over the last 10 years. In 2006, Visions posted $106 million in loans. Less than 10 years later, its first-quarter 2016 financial report listed loans of $2.22 billion. Assets a decade ago totaled $1.785 billion, while Q1 2016 figures closed at $3.538 billion. Annual net income climbed from $12.7 million to more than $25 million during the same period and membership grew from approximately 116,000 to 179,000.

The credit union has taken multiple paths to achieve its growth.

“The growth of Visions has come both from mergers and acquisitions as well as from organic growth,” continues Muse, who assumed his current role on May 1, 2013, “and from our geographic expansion into Eastern Pennsylvania and Western New Jersey. We have also introduced a number of new products, such as insurance and brokerage accounts, and expanded our trust and retirement-planning capabilities … Just in the 3.25 years I’ve been at Visions, we’ve grown our assets by $412 million, opened four new branches and acquired another eight from mergers, boosted our employment by 75 people (half from recent mergers), and increased the membership by 22,000.”

Challenges
Credit unions face a number of challenges. A 2016 report of a survey completed last year by the National Association of Federal Credit Unions listed managements’ top challenges in the following order: loan growth, regulatory burdens, membership issues, and technology. The managers saw their primary staff challenges as lack of training, regulatory burdens, adjusting to a new sales culture, and embracing change.

“There’s no doubt Visions faces a number of challenges,” concurs Muse, “Financial services is a very competitive industry with the thousands of banks and credit unions vying for customers. We’re also competing against what the industry calls non-traditional banking institutions, such as Apple and Walmart, which are using technology to bypass traditional banking. While competition is certainly a challenge, I see it as driving innovation. In the end, the members benefit.

“The competition leads to our second challenge,” continues Muse, “technology investment. Today, members want to do their banking at their convenience, which means they have to be connected 24/7 to our array of products. If a member decides to start an application for one of our … [offerings] and then completes it at his or her convenience, our technology should enable that process and be intuitive for the user. Ideally, our service reps should be able to see the members’ progress and offer assistance if appropriate. Integrating our mobile services with our core processing means more than just providing account balances over a mobile device. Getting the technology right has been both time-consuming and expensive.” In 2014, Visions was recognized by MagnifyMoney for the “most improved mobile app” based on ratings of iOS and Android banking apps.

Another obstacle is cybersecurity. “Our members are rightly concerned about computer hackers stealing personal data,” avers Visions’ CEO. “Every week the media has a story about another company or government agency whose security was breached with the loss of millions of records. Visions just issued thousands of new credit and debit cards with chips to protect our members, which cost the credit union a lot of money. Our frustration is that many retailers still haven’t adapted to the new chip cards, which means many of our members are not protected properly and the reissuance of cards was an added expense … Cybersecurity is a continuing race as the hackers get more sophisticated and the credit unions have to adopt new technologies.”

Muse then turns to the burden of the regulatory requirements. “There is no question that financial regulations such as those found in the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act have made us change the way we do business,” observes Muse. “As a precaution to protect our bottom line and our members from the unintended consequences of Dodd–Frank, Visions now carries higher-than-required reserves to provide time to adjust. Each of these costs represents less that we can give back to our membership. In addition, Visions also needs to spend more money on technology and personnel to remain in compliance with the growing number of regulations, some of which don’t make sense. Bureaucracies can sometimes create rules and regulations that not only cost us money but even upset our members. For example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau promulgated that all mortgage holders should receive statements of their accounts based on the regulation’s criteria, which resulted in Visions sending out a separate mortgage statement at approximately mid-month rather than including this mortgage information in the regular account statements, which was current practice. Visions obviously incurred additional costs to comply, and then received a number of complaints from our members who didn’t want to receive a separate, mid-month statement. That puts us in the [awkward] position of spending money to upset our members.”

Muse saves the brand challenge for last. “A lot of financial services that once were cutting edge are now … [ubiquitous],” he opines. “The challenge is how to stand out from the competition and not just be a commodity. My biggest concern is how our members interact with our service reps and with our technology. These experiences create our brand and differentiate Visions from our competitors. Branding is more than logos and taglines; it’s offering real service that is helpful, whether it originates in a brick-and-mortar facility or in our mobile banking. To reach this level of member experience while boosting brand loyalty, Visions needs to be part of the communities it serves and to understand each community’s needs; we need to leverage this knowledge about the local market and offer an experience that responds to their needs. That’s what attracts new members, and that’s what keeps them coming back to Visions.”

Visions’ sweet spots
To meet the challenges, Muse cites Visions’ strengths, which he calls sweet spots. “Credit unions have some inherent advantages over banks,” the CEO points out. “We’re set up as not-for-profit corporations which are owned by our members. In effect, we’re cooperatives that don’t operate as profit centers only concerned with stockholders’ focus on quarterly performance. We’re not here to gouge our members; we take a long-term corporate view of our direction. The mission of credit unions is to offer affordable financial services. National customer-satisfaction surveys confirm that our members rate us more highly than banks. (One of the competitive advantages of credit unions includes exemption from paying corporate income tax.) This allows credit unions to pass on savings through the entire product line to the members by offering lower rates on loans and credit cards and higher rates on savings. In 2015, our member give-back was $16.7 million in interest rates and $4.1 million in fees. Credit unions also typically help their members avoid fees by not requiring a minimum balance in their accounts.” (The 2016 Bankrate Credit Union Checking Survey reported that 76 percent of surveyed institutions had no minimum-balance requirements to avoid fees.)

Muse then focuses on Visions’ sweet spots. “We’re always putting ourselves in the shoes of our members,” explains the CEO. “That’s why we not only make our ATMs readily accessible but we also offer our members access to a network of ATMs nationwide without any fee when they have a Flex Checking Plus account. That’s right, Visions doesn’t charge for this service; we pick up the cost. We also offer first-time home buyers a special package, eliminate any closing costs for select mortgages, give our members ‘a pass’ if they occasionally have to skip a payment, and include a $250 coupon for those taking out a wedding loan. These are some of the examples of how we anticipate and respond to the needs of our members and think out of the box.”

A history of growth
The concept of a not-for-profit, depository institution originated in England early in the 19th century. It spread to Europe in the 1840s and then to Canada in 1900. The first credit union in the United States — St. Mary’s Cooperative Credit Association — opened in 1909 in Manchester, New Hampshire. The model was based on democratic governance, equal voting power regardless of a member’s deposits, a member-elected board of directors, and dependence on volunteers. The members came from working-class families who couldn’t afford commercial credit. By 1930, 32 states had adopted credit-union legislation that spawned 1,100 credit unions. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Federal Credit Union Act creating a national system that both chartered and provided oversight. The act also sought to encourage thrift. The NCUA became an independent agency in 1970. In 2015, the agency reported that the U.S. had more than 6,000 institutions, which signed up 3.7 million people.

Visions was chartered in 1966 and opened its first office under the IBM cafeteria in Endicott employing 17 people. When Frank Berrish, Muse’s predecessor, joined the organization in 1975, the institution posted $32 million in assets. Today, Visions boasts $3.579 billion (6/30/16 report) in assets, serves close to 180,000 members, and employs 496 (full-time equivalents) of whom more than 300 are in Central New York. It has 43 branches and more than 100 ATMs in three states (New York with 23 branches, New Jersey with 11 branches, and Pennsylvania with 9 branches), and manages more than 250,000 square feet of property — most of which it owns.

Marketing
The sleepy credit union that morphed into a behemoth is celebrating its 50th anniversary in business with an aggressive marketing campaign. “In Syracuse, we are a key supporter of the Lakeview Amphitheater,” says Mandy DeHate, assistant VP of marketing at Visions. 

“Visions is collaborating with Onondaga County and Live Nation on a three-year commitment as the box-office sponsor at Central New York’s premier, outdoor-performance space. This summer, the Amphitheater is expecting 200,000 people to attend the performances … We want to be part of the community as we grow here in Central New York,” she says.

In addition to the Syracuse–naming sponsorship, DeHate recites a long list of golden-anniversary celebrations. “Visions is a key supporter of the Dick’s [Sporting Goods] Open [professional] golf tournament, which attracts a large crowd every year” she notes. “As part of our 50th-anniversary-celebration campaign entitled ‘#ThanksVisions,’ we want to show that life is unscripted, so we brought 1,000 cupcakes to the tournament as a surprise give-away. The idea is to promote random acts of kindness and, frankly, just have fun. Other examples of random acts of kindness include Visions sponsoring a free movie — “Back to the Future” — and passing out car-wash coupons. We are also considering ideas such as a scavenger hunt, buying surprise meals at a restaurant, passing out umbrellas at our branches for members caught in the rain, and giving branch managers gift cards to distribute.”

In December 2015, Visions kicked off its random-acts-of-kindness program by sending the CEO under cover at the Giant Food Store in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where the credit union had just opened a branch. “Ty [Muse] dressed up in a Giant Food Store uniform and bagged groceries for unsuspecting customers, says DeHate. “He then announced that the groceries were a gift from Visions as a way to introduce the credit union to the community. In the three hours that he bagged groceries, Visions paid out more than $1,500, with purchases ranging from $8 to $250.”

The promotion, which was designed to be fun, ended up being an emotional experience as well for the CEO. “One man was at the store with his son and he was shopping for his grandfather, a veteran who had lost a limb working at a steel mill,” reflects Muse. “The young man, on his own dime, was taking the time to buy groceries on a regular basis for his grandfather. Another woman, who was pregnant and shopping for her incarcerated sister, was very emotional because the groceries Visions bought saved her enough money to have a Christmas … Our mantra is to make Visions matter: this experience proved to me that we can make a difference in people’s lives … To me, humor is like medicine. There’s no reason you can’t have fun, like what you do at work, and make people laugh together.”

The undercover-boss idea, which was captured on hidden video cameras and went viral on YouTube, won Visions the “Community/PR–Ongoing Event” diamond award from the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) marketing and business-development council. The award was presented in Anaheim, California at CUNA’s 23rd annual conference held in March of this year. Visions worked with ABC Creative, a Syracuse–based advertising agency, on the project.

Employees
Muse returns to the subject of sweet spots. “When I think about our competitive advantage,” he says, “I think first of our employees. Here at Visions, we pride ourselves on ‘people helping people.’ Our goal is not to hire people just looking for a job; we want candidates who are looking for a career. It’s also clear from our recruiting videos that we are looking for applicants who care about people. This is our philosophy, our mission, to realize our greater social purpose — that every member matters.

“Visions must be committed to providing opportunities,” Muse continues, “for all of our employees both for [business and personal] development, paying competitive wages, offering generous retirement and group benefits, and paid-time-off to give back to the membership and to the communities we serve. We also provide an extensive wellness-program, which provides annual screenings; onsite fitness center; running and walking clubs; wellness education; and more. We invest in extensive training for our senior leadership and for our middle managers. Visions encourages continuing education for all of its employees through a tuition-reimbursement program. Most importantly, we listen to the employees. We have invested a good deal of time and money in surveying the staff to understand their concerns and to solicit their ideas.

“[In short], we are creating a culture of growth by empowering our employees through education and innovation,” intones Muse. “You can’t have a great organization without this effort and an emphasis on teamwork. To ensure our continued growth, we need a workforce with smart, committed, service-oriented team members. Our goal is to make Visions a great place to work both to attract and retain employees.” Visions is currently planning a major remodeling of corporate headquarters, which will begin in October, and the company also has a five-year plan to renovate the branches.

Muse, 45, was born in the South and grew up in Wallkill, New York. He attended Northeastern University on a track scholarship, where he earned his bachelor’s degree, a master’s in accounting, and his MBA. He worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers as an audit manager, Goldman Sachs as a controller in the real-estate division, and GE Asset Management as a finance manager. Muse is a CPA, who, prior to joining Visions, served as the CFO of Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union, an organization with $3.7 billion in assets and 250,000 members. Muse, his wife Crystal, and two daughters live in Vestal. In their spare time, Muse and Crystal sponsor and coach the Triple Cities Running Club, a free track club that has more than 90 children ages seven and up participating.

DeHate, 38, was born and raised in Michigan, where she attended Ferris State University and graduated in 1999 with a bachelor’s degree in advertising. She joined Visions in November 2002 and has held the roles of marketing/business development analyst, marketing/business development assistant, marketing manager, and was promoted to assistant VP of marketing in March 2016. DeHate and her husband Evan have lived in the Endicott area for more than 15 years.

Planning for continued growth
Visions is focused on growth. “We anticipate continued growth in all of our markets,” states Muse. “There are certainly M&A opportunities as well as relying on organic growth. Visions is both expanding its product offerings while improving the current array of products and services. Our 80,000-square-foot headquarters building is already too small, and our plans call for expanding our existing facility to 130,000 square feet. The average age of our new members is in the mid-30s, which is our target market for those needing personal loans. We are committed to investing in technology to respond to the needs of our members.”

For Muse, the stars are aligned. “I think Visions rocks,” he concludes with a smile.

Contact Poltenson at npoltenson@cnybj.com