DEERFIELD, Ill. — San Francisco-based Patelco Credit Union is writing the book this year on the nurturing of SEGs considering its stellar record for the giant Walgreens drug chain as measured in member growth and loan volume.
"It's always been a challenge to get our arms around handling the financial needs of employees and so far we seem to be on track," declared Ed Swanson, the Chicago executive long designated as Walgreens point man for the $4.1 billion California CU.
Indeed, since Patelco won the 1999 bid to offer financial services to the company's 250,000 employees, it has witnessed steady gains in membership, climbing 51% since 2005 along with a 22% increase in share deposits and 28% in loans.
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Apart from offering a broad array of tech and online products, including mobile banking and a corporate Visa card, Patelco considers having a six-employee branch on the Walgreens Deerfield campus dedicated to member service a key ingredient to its success with the SEG.
"I'd say we are very competitive on auto loan rates [now at 4.9%] and simply do the unexpected, going above and beyond traditional practice in reaching out to their employees," said Swanson, Patelco vice president of national accounts.
The Deerfield branch will perform house calls, hand delivering loan paper and do the same in overnighting documents, said Swanson, who before joining Patelco was an executive with BCU in nearby Vernon Hills, which serves the employees of the Baxter Co. pharmaceutical firm.
Patelco attempts strong ties with store managers and has a booth at the heavily attended biannual store managers conference, which last year was in Las Vegas. "We're the only non-Walgreens entity allowed to exhibit," said Swanson
The Patelco vice president admitted that serving the Walgreens network with 6,200 stores stretching over 49 states can appear daunting, but the testimony to Patelco's success "is the number of letters on break-room walls praising Patelco for its friendly tellers and comments like 'this is the best service I've ever received from a financial institution anywhere.'"
Swanson said he and other members of senior management realize that not all of those 250,000 employees will or have gravitated to Patelco but he believes Patelco is doing the right thing.
The Deerfield branch includes three member service reps, a branch manager, a business development representative and Swanson.
"Most of the team has been part of this Walgreens branch since 1999 with very little turnover, which has also added to our success with the relationship," said Swanson, noting Patelco averages over $1 million per month in new loans made to Walgreens employees.
The Patelco Web site (www.patelco.org) is accessible on the Walgreens employees intranet site so "employees can check on their account, make payments or do direct deposit," noted Heather McGivern, the branch manager.
As another example of access, Swanson and branch employees are allowed to set up a table to distribute CU literature and answer questions from Walgreens employees at the corporation's annual summer Grill Day. "We don't do the hamburgers, but we do give out ice cream," said Swanson.
Not all is cut and dry, emphasized Patelco executives. "We do have to be careful about following all of the Walgreens rules, including one that bars us marketing to employees until they've been on board 90 days," noted Anita Macias, senior vice president of corporate planning and communications.
Macias said also the practice of corporations putting out requests for proposals for financial services is now becoming more commonplace, "but at the time when we got the bid, it was pretty unusual."
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