Lots of controversy about "the New/New" at SECU. Much has to do with the real and increasingly apparent declines in assets, in member service, in employee morale, and in the reputation for fairness the credit union had earned. Plenty of signs that these drops in quality are not just a matter of opinion or a mere difference in outlook - or culture. These are hard dollar losses across many measures of performance and productivity.
Members are receiving less from their credit union while paying more - often much more.
Easy example is in loan performance. You probably have noticed much mention in the comments about the major Board and senior leadership snafu, resulting from the arbitrary and fiscally irresponsible "centralization" of SECU collections in 2022. This was no accident, it was as Forrest Gump would say...well, we all know what Mr. Gump has to say about this sort of thing!
Previously, the collection of loan accounts was managed at the branch where the loan was made. By utilizing the strong bond between local loan officers and local member borrowers; if problems arose, the local staff had the ability to work with members to find positive solutions. And again yes, unexpected, bad stuff does happen to some very fine members; and yes losses do occur. SECU historically has enjoyed one of the lowest loan loss (charge-offs) ratios among peer credit unions.
At 12/31/2021. SECU's charge-off ratio was .19%, about 2/10s of 1%! Even though the current SECU Board would lead you to believe that SECU borrowers were a bunch of n'er-do-well, non-"A-paper" slackers!
Take a look at the cost of that Board/management "centralization" error to you as a member. When the current regime came into leadership in late 2021 here are the delinquency/loss ratios they inherited from those legacy employees (supposedly also n'er-do-well slackers!):
👍At 12/31/2021
# of Delinquent loans: 12,148
$$$ Delinquent 60+ days: $352,881,000
Total Charge-offs for year: $50,473,000
✔ Results after the "centralization snafu"... losses up by over $45 million - up over 90%!
👎At 12/31/2022
# of Delinquent loans: 25,909
$$$ Delinquent 60+ days: $556,172,000
Total Charge-offs for year: $95,535,000
✔ Hey, but it gets even better! Take a look at Charge-offs for 1st QTR 2023...
👎👎1/01/2023 through 3/31/2023:
Total Charge-offs for just the 1st quarter : $47,582,000 ... almost equal to all of year 2021!
...maybe we should let Forrest run the place? Or at least sit on the Board! (Run Forrest Run!)
