Diversity Drives Innovation and Business Performance

Our latest What Matters Now? research showed that multicultural people accounted for 100 percent of U.S. population growth and 61 percent of credit union membership growth during the past five years.

With rapidly expanding buying power, these consumers have emerged as one of the fastest growing and most influential consumer groups in the country. And, we’re starting to see just how much culture and background can influence how people approach their finances. As an organization committed to helping people achieve financial security, we need to better understand their attitudes, beliefs, values, feelings and priorities if we’re to truly meet their needs.

At CUNA Mutual Group, we believe that starts with hiring and collaborating with people that better represent the consumers we serve.

I recently had the privilege to spend time with a group of talented students from across the country. They visited our Madison campus as finalists in our annual FOCUSS Idea Competition.

This year’s program challenged students from three historically black colleges and universities and three Wisconsin colleges to create a credit union geared toward multiracial, multicultural and multigenerational members.

I was impressed by the innovative ideas presented by this talented group of students. A few ideas that really struck me were the growing importance of data and analytics and the opportunity that exists for credit unions to serve more than 26 million U.S. adults who don’t have access to traditional lending.

Through this competition, we’re building relationships with colleges and students we haven’t worked with in the past. We're encouraging young people to start thinking about financial challenges and solutions. And, we're introducing them to the credit union movement as we identify and recruit talent as diverse as the people we serve.

In the last two years, we’ve increased the number of interns recruited from schools participating in FOCUSS by one third. We’ve already seen tremendous value working with our emerging, innovative thinkers.

This example shows how diversity helps us innovate. Every FOCUSS participant, whether they come to work for CUNA Mutual Group or not, is giving us the insights and knowledge to help more people achieve financial security.

New ideas come from shifts in perspective. Bringing in diverse perspectives drives the kind of innovation that fosters meaningful connections to help us serve all consumers better.