Year in Review

As a member and owner of Veridian Credit Union, your membership helps to improve financial resources and wellness - not only for yourself, but for your fellow members and throughout your community.  While we kick off 2022, I'd like to thank you for your membership by sharing a few highlights of the good you and your membership have helped to create over the past year.

Technology

Let’s start with technology that makes your finances simpler to manage. Technology in financial services is evolving faster than ever, and you rely on Veridian to keep pace. We made significant upgrades to our operating systems and online and mobile banking platform in recent years. In 2021, we added video calls as an option for you to connect with our Financial Services and Commercial Services teams, and we're working now on expanding that access to more of our teams in the next year. We’re also in the final stages of an exciting new service that will soon allow you to make digital payments directly from your accounts faster and easier than ever before. We look forward to sharing more on that in the coming months.

Process Improvements

You provided invaluable feedback that helped us make several procedural improvements. With your input, we simplified the process for submitting transaction disputes, added the ability to make travel notifications within online and mobile banking, streamlined our secure document transfer system and upgraded our lending systems to help ensure consistent decisioning. We also revamped our mail and email communication to ensure we're only reaching out with information and updates that are of specific interest to you and your unique circumstances. For example, in a separate outreach campaign, we were able to save 1,064 members more than a million dollars in interest by refinancing their auto loan at a lower rate.

Branches

In March, we reopened our branches located in Hy-Vee stores across Iowa after temporarily closing them for nearly a year during the height of the pandemic. We also opened our Georgetown branch in Ankeny in July and announced plans to open new branches in Waterloo and Omaha in 2022.

Homeownership

Homeownership is one of the most significant tools allowing many to maintain financial stability and achieve long-term financial success. Making homeownership more equitable in our communities is one of the most impactful ways we can achieve our mission to create successful financial futures.  Last summer, our CDFI certification allowed us to receive a federal grant to offer more Financial Inclusion Mortgages to members who experience barriers to homeownership. We’re also using that grant and working with local nonprofit partners to match funds in Individual Development Accounts for low-income members who are saving for their first home. In fact, we helped more than 6,000 members with their first mortgage in 2021.

Financial Literacy

We also added to our financial literacy resources last year. You can now take a Financial Health Survey within online and mobile banking to get a comprehensive view of your overall financial wellness and customized steps to improve it. All of our financial literacy tools are now better organized and easier to access at veridiancu.org/education. We also continued our work with local nonprofit partners to offer financial literacy programming in our communities.

Employee Engagement

In order to serve you well, it’s important for Veridian to be a diverse, equitable and inclusive employer. With the help of a strategic plan, we’re working to make our credit union reflect the diversity in our communities at all levels, from membership to management. Last year, during a roundtable discussion, one of our employees shared an idea to launch a formal mentorship program to help minimize any challenges our minoritized employees experience on their path to new opportunities and leadership positions. It’s such a great idea – and we did launch that program in the spring. We've also been adding to our team and hired 164 new employees to serve our growing membership.

Member Experience

Finally, I want to thank you for all the recognition and awards you’ve showered on our employees last year. So many of you voted in reader surveys in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, the Des Moines Register, Omaha Magazine and more to consistently recognize us as the best local credit union and best service provider, among other categories. On behalf of all of our employees, I can tell you it’s a humbling honor to have earned your trust and to be your recommendation to neighbors and friends.

Thank you again for your membership and for all the ways it benefited your fellow members and communities in 2021.  Please continue to let us know what you think we're doing well and what we can change to better serve you at veridiancu.org/feedback. As a not-for-profit financial cooperative owned by you, we can't do it without you.

Here’s to creating and sharing more success in 2022.