CUSO FORMED TO HELP CUs THRIVE OFFERS NEW SERVICES
Trellance, the newly-reemerged CUSO, plans to showcase its brand, product and service offerings at CUNA’s GAC 2018. True to its commitment to providing innovative yet simple solutions to help credit unions adapt and thrive, Trellance plans to offer data-driven consultative, operational and educational services to Credit Unions.
Last month a CU Times article featured the rebrand of CU Mortgage Services to The Servion Group. Their story is the kind we cherish and love to celebrate. Beginning with 3 credit unions working together to help their members. That’s cooperation among cooperatives at its best. Here’s the rest of the story. Enjoy!
PART ONE: Life Story and Experiences
What’s your current position and can you give me a brief overview of what it is you do in your work?
I’m the President and CEO of The Servion Group. Honestly, though, I always tell my employees that I’d drop all titles if I could. I’m a basketball coach outside of the office; I look at myself as a coach when I am at the office.
We focus on relationships rather than on transactions at Servion. In line with that, we’ve developed a language that supports our culture. We talk about “hitting the bullseye,” which is our way of visualizing of the different ways we want to add value for our partners.
We also talk about service in layers of the bullseye. Availability, accuracy, and partnership are the outer rings. You need to be able to hit them if you want to hit the bullseye. We hit our bullseye when we have earned our partners’ trust through availability and accuracy, and thereby become their advisor on the road to success.
As the coach of the Servion team, my day to day is about leading us to hit the bullseye for every credit union we serve.
What would you say most motivates you to do what you do? What are you most excited or passionate about?
I’m fortunate, when you asked me what I do day to day, you might as well have asked what I am passionate about. When I get done leading our staff townhalls or with an ideation meeting, I could run laps around the building.
One thing in particular that energizes me is innovation. The Servion Group came from an idea first drawn-up on the back of a napkin. That origin story is very much in line with my leadership style. If someone on our staff has an idea for a great solution – one that can profitably deliver the benefits of scale to our partners – I get excited about empowering them to go make it a reality. In fact, many of our services today came from staff pitching ways we could solve a pain point for our partners. Recent examples are our correspondent and wholesale mortgage channels, or our mortgage quality control service.
Read more on NACUSO Spotlight on Brad Crandall, CEO of The Servion Group…
In my thirty years of forming credit union collaborations, I have come to see common lessons, especially in multiply owned CUSOs providing one or more back office operational services. I examine twelve of those lessons in these types of CUSOs. Read more on A Dozen Lessons Learned in Credit Union Collaborations By Guy Messick…
Never burn a bridge with former girlfriends. It can jump start a career. I stayed friendly with my high school girlfriend Maryanne who married John Unangst the President of Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union. John formed one of the first CUSOs in 1988. The CUSO provided mortgage services and data processing services to multiple credit unions. As a result of meeting John through Maryanne, I formed John’s CUSO. John became a director on the newly formed NACUSO Board and asked me to go with him to San Diego on his dime to a NACUSO Conference and play golf. My bags were packed before he finished his invitation.
In San Diego, I did a presentation to a four table conference. John suggested to the NACUSO Board that I be their General Counsel. My most attractive feature was that I was free. So began my representation of NACUSO. I thought I could handle this gig as CUSOs are essentially small businesses and I had a lot of experience representing small businesses, including being the attorney for the local Chamber of Commerce. I grew up in a small business. My parents owned two restaurants. Eventually, my practice evolved into the near exclusive representation of credit unions and CUSOs.
The part of our practice that gets my juices flowing is helping credit unions create and expand CUSOs and other collaborative relationships. How can we structure a relationship between organizations and people that will reward all participants on a personal and professional level? Collaboration is not easy. It is not altruistic. It is finding people with the right values and incentives to work together to achieve a common goal. It is a challenge but when it works, it can provide amazing results.
We’re excited to feature the 2017 NACUSO CU Collaboration & Innovation Award winner 7 Insurance. We sat down with Jerry Tweeten to hear how he came to work in credit unions and how two credit unions, less than a mile apart decided to not see each other as competitors but collaborators for the benefit of their members.
PART ONE: Life Story and Experience
Jerry Tweeten, President of 7 Insurance, not to be confused with “Elf on a Shelf”
What’s your current position and can you give me a brief overview of what it is you do in your work? I am the President, and we are a full lines independent insurance agency. We are a collaboration of Y12 FCU and ORNL FCU and I oversee nine CSR/Agents. I manage both credit union’s corporate insurance programs and their other insurance programs, GAP, Service Contracts, Debt Cancellation, Accidental Death & Dismemberment (AD&D), and collateral protection insurance (CPI) programs.
What would you say most motivates you to do what you do? What are you most excited or passionate about?
What motivates and excites me most of all, along with our team, is saving our members money. The savings are real, not perceived. We have saved our members well over $500,000. Our most successful stories involved three of our members that saved over $3,000 annually on their insurance and provided better coverage. How can this not excite you?
I want to hear the story of how you came to work with credit unions. What attracted you to work for 7 Insurance?
In 1986 I started at Alaska USA FCU as a temp employee, working in their insurance department. I worked within the insurance department during my tenure there and established their insurance CUSO as their Manager of Insurance Services.
My father was a CMSGT at Elmendorf AFB and opened an account for my brother, sister and myself. AK USA FCU was always part of my life since we moved to Alaska in 1977, so for me it was a place that was always there for us. I had a friend who knew the human resources person at AK USA FCU and she told me there were open positions. I was there the next day and started working the following week. AK USA FCU believed in me and offered me every opportunity to succeed. I can’t thank them enough for what they did for me and my family. I’ve been working in and around credit union’s since 1986 and won’t work in any other industry.
Read more on Spotlight on 7 Insurance President, Jerry Tweeten…
