The 21,000-member, $190 million Rio Grande Credit Union in Albuquerque, N.M., has won an award for the creative way it introduced shared branching to its members.

The CU Service Network,  a CUSO which coordinates shared branching for credit unions in western states, recognized the credit union for the progress it made introducing shared branching to it members. 

Rio Grande only began shared branching on July 1, 2011, according to Dohnia Dorman, assistant vice president for marketing at the credit union.

Dorman said the credit union had already found its members favored using branches and wanted to offer shared branching as another credit union benefit.

Rio Grande used a treasure hunt theme for the marketing campaign and relied on the notion of members having to use a secret word in order to reach the shared branching treasure. The secret word was their account number, Dorman explained.

“We know quite a few of our members that use the branch forget their account numbers and use their Social Security numbers at the tellers,” Dorman said. “Of course that won't work for a shared branching situation so we wanted to emphasize the importance of remembering the account number.”