In a session on reaching the 18 – 30 year old Hispanics”, Reverend Ed Gomez of El Buen Samaritano Epsicopal Mission said the best way to build trust, engage, and serve the Hispanic culture, and I would argue any culture, is to get outside of our own heads – both when we communicate and design products.

In a quote I swiped from the YES Summit blog, Ed said Wells Fargo did this…

...because it hired Hispanic staff, including management, and engaged the market by participating in local community events. It made its presence felt on the personal basis and used the relationships it built with community leaders to design products specifically suited to people who operate outside the majority economy.

Wright-Patt CU wanted to be more relevant to young adults, so they hired 23 year-old Dustin Limburg on as Marketing Representative for Young Adults. When I asked him how they are approaching the market, Dustin said, “We basically look at them like a separate SEG.”

How are you getting outside of your head and speaking the cultural language?

This morning we had the opportunity to hang out with some Gen-Yers and talk about how they bank, save, and plan for the future. Here’s a snapshot (note: because they didn’t speak in html code, I added the links) -

Marsha

...is a 23 year-old University of Texas student and Starbucks Barista. She says:

My debt is in student loans and credit cards. After I graduate, I’m going to law school. When it’s all done, I expect to have $200,000 in student loans. It could take until I’m 45 to pay them off.

I bank with a credit union, and do all of my banking online. All of my loans are through Wells Fargo and Sallie Mae, but if my credit union had private loans I’d use them.

I go to my mom for financial advice. There is so much clutter on my credit union’s homepage that even if they had financial advice I still wouldn’t read it.

Do I think about retirement? Well, I know I want to go to France and I want to write a book.

Aaron

...is a 24-year old developer for St. Edwards University. He says:

I do all my banking online. I use ING for everything. I used to use a credit union because my parents were members. But I dropped them when they killed their mobile banking.

ING’s Orange Checking account makes me more aware of how I pay my bills because I’m getting a yield. It helps me save and probably helps me pay on time.

Elysa

...is a 19 year-old University of Texas student. She says:

I probably wouldn’t go to a financial literacy seminar put on by a credit union or bank, but I’d listen to a speaker invited by my sorority.

I’m a business student, and plan on learning about investing through classes at school.

I have no debt, I was always told to pay my credit cards in full (my dad is financial advisor).

John Donovan of peer-to-peer lending community Lending Club kicked off his presentation by comparing his company to an “online credit union.”

Lending Club began solely in Facebook and launched independently in September of this year.

Using Google’s OpenSocial platform, Lending Club is placing themselves inside of popular social networks “the same way you put a physical branch where people are.” From their blog:

OpenSocial offers the ability to retrieve information about a user, and get distribution, across many social networks. What it means is that Lending Club borrowers will be able to leverage their network of connections more broadly, that lenders will be presented with better opportunities to invest in people they trust and feel more comfortable with (such as friends of friends), and that a broader distribution will help find better matches between lenders and borrowers.

John also brought up the prospect of a white label partnership between Lending Club and credit unions. In this scenerio, Lending Club would play back-end provider to a CU-branded P2P lending community. This is pretty interesting considering Zopa’s announcement last week. I wonder if they were planning that before they heard about Zopa’s US plans.

Also, in July they hosted a consumer-generated video campaign, asking users to explain the value of Lending Club and P2P lending. Here’s one particularly well-done submission, followed by one particularly wacked-out submission:

(I dedicate them both to Ron Shevlin)

Christopher Morris has set up YES Summit social network at yescucommunity.com. He used Ning, a free (for a basic account) tool for building custom social networks, to create it. The YES CU Community allows users to engage in conversation forums, post blogs, join and create groups, “friend” each other, and share photo and video content (Ning automatically converts video files to a flash player…awesome).

In Christopher’s session explaining the network, he said they built it to 1) Facilitate and perpetuate discussion on reacing the 18 – 30 demographic and 2) Provide hands-on education to allow users to play in a social networking space and see how it works.

I like that CUNA is experimenting with this. A conference-specific social network has the potential to add a lot more depth and follow-up opportunity to the experience. Facebook and LinkedIn are both much better ways for me to keep up with new credit union friends than the lunchbox I keep my business cards in. Admittedly, half of this is because I always forget to bring my business cards to conferences.

Ning’s functionality and back-end interface are really impressive. To add features to your network, you simply drag and drop:

Definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for a way to kick off an online community.