“Just generically, I can tell you that a marketplace that's in a very high-density metropolitan area – that's not our sweet spot,” he said. Instead, the scorecard has helped United Federal look at small and medium-size towns carefully. For example, South Bend and Reno rank closely in terms of demographics and market size, Easterling said.

“We've used it for several years now to figure out where we're going to make the next branch investment,” Easterling explained. “Then also, if a merger opportunity comes along, we look at that scorecard to evaluate that. This way we're actually getting a sense of the comparative opportunity cost and the return on that opportunity cost between a merger and a branch investment. It gives us a way to put everything on the same measuring device, so we think it improves our decision-making.”

The scorecard isn't for everyone, he warned; it was created to fit United Federal's goals of being convenient and local. And as the head of a credit union whose loan-to-share ratio is about 122%, Easterling said, he's focused on finding deposit-acquisition opportunities this year.

United Federal's spread-out nature is part of its DNA, Easterling said.

“If you go back to 2006, First Resource Credit Union, which was originally Whirlpool Employees Credit Union, and United Federal Credit Union, both of them were headquartered here in southwest Michigan. United Federal Credit Union was actually originally Clark Equipment Credit Union,” he explained. “When they decided to merge, it was the largest voluntary merger at the time. With that merger, you had this very diverse footprint because the Whirlpool footprint went from Michigan down to Arkansas to Ohio. The Clark Equipment footprint went from Michigan to North Dakota and to North Carolina.”

In 2009, the credit union entered Nevada after acquiring Clearstar Credit Union. “When we looked at that, since we already had this diverse footprint, it seemed like it wasn't that big of a stretch for us. We already were used to serving across time and distance,” Easterling noted.

In some ways it's a diversification tactic, too, because each market has its own economic cycle. “It just helps to reduce our risk in the marketplace,” he said.