When Bill Cheney led the National Trade Association, policymakers often asked him, “If credit unions are as good a deal as you say, why isn’t everyone a member of a credit union?”“If I were the CEO of a bank, my job would be to maximize the value of that bank for the shareholders,” said Cheney, who is now the CEO of SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union, the largest credit in California for school employees and their families.
A 2020 merger with Sacramento-based Schools Financial Credit Union made the state’s largest credit union even bigger. Originally serving Orange County, it now covers the entire state, offering a variety of products and services such as checking and savings, credit cards, home and car loans and retirement planning.
We had to move quickly to protect the employees at our branches. But we also sent hundreds of team members home, so we had to make arrangements for them to work from home. But the big challenge credit unions face is educating younger generations about their value, mission, and purpose because it’s not always clear. Even some of our members refer to us as their bank. We are in the banking business, but we are not a bank. We’re a credit union; we’re a mutual.
Real estate is a huge part of our business—not as much as it was when rates were lower, but we do make a lot of mortgage loans and home equity loans. Most of our real estate team is in Tustin, although we also have operation centers in Riverside and Sacramento. In some respects, we’ve been using artificial intelligence in our business for a long time, but it isn’t the same as people. If a member calls with a question, for example, we have an internal pilot that uses AI to help our team quickly find the answer by going through thousands of pages of standard operating procedures. But a person always answers the member’s question.