Retirement Readiness Program Helps Raise Over $200 Million in New Deposits

Educated Investor University
August 22, 2007 | COMMENTS

There is no better time to promote retirement accounts than tax time, right? But how do you energize your employees to get members excited and motivated to better prepare for retirement, the most critical savings goal of all?

Looking to avoid a “run-of-the-mill IRA promotion” with lackluster results, the executives at Mountain America Credit Union, a $2-billion, 242,000-member credit union headquartered in Salt Lake City, wanted to focus on a more creative strategy. So they crafted a marketing and educational blitz designed to make employees more knowledgeable, more comfortable, and more confident when discussing retirement strategies with their members.

Mountain America structured its “Build Your Retirement” campaign around promotional materials sent to each of their 48 branches. The materials were intended to create buzz among employees and included a humorous yet educational video that spoofed a home improvement show, a gingerbread house kit that helped branch team members get into the “building” spirit, and a large wooden crate filled with hardhats, posters, and other supplies designed to market the campaign to members.

“Employees demonstrated tremendous enthusiasm,” said Matthew Clark, vice president of investments for Mountain America . “They offered free ‘retirement inspections' to members to ensure their retirement plans were up to code. Some branches allowed dress-down days when campaign flare and hardhats were worn, which increased participation. And members frequently asked employees about the hardhats and badges, making it easier to start the conversation about retirement planning and IRAs.”

Retirement Readiness

Working with Precision Information (PI), publisher of the Educated Investor University (www.educatedinvestor.com/university), Mountain America also set up a one- to two-hour online retirement readiness course with pre- and post testing to measure retention.

“­They helped us customize the available retirement content to focus on what we needed to educate our employees about,” said Clark . “What really struck me was how much our employees took away from the content.”

Of the employees who took the pre-test, the average score was 60 percent; post-test, the scores went up to an average of 76 percent. Overall, employee satisfaction ratings exceeded 90%. Keeping with the concept of making it fun (rather than making the training mandatory) Mountain America encouraged branches to participate in the Educated Investor University course by providing creative incentives such as a staff pizza party for every branch that had 100% participation. Also, frontline employees received incentive payments for every referral they made to an investment services representative.

Impressive Results

Over 420 employees (about 90% of the targeted staff members) completed the course in about three weeks. Meanwhile, from January through April, Mountain America opened 2,669 new IRA accounts for a total of greater than $26 million in new deposits (up from 1,588 new accounts and roughly $13.5 million for January through April 30, 2006—a 92% increase).

Year to date, Mountain America has also opened an impressive 16,386 new term deposit accounts for a total of roughly $213.6 million in new deposits (up from $94.7 million in 2006—a 125% increase).

“The increase in new IRA and term accounts, as well as deposits, has been the result of educated, empowered, and engaged employees seeking opportunities to positively make a difference with our members during the campaign,“ said Clark. “Having our employees more educated on products and services helped tremendously in terms of meeting our sales goals, and Educated Investor was a great tool for accomplishing this,” says Nathan Anderson, vice president of marketing and sales. By working together to craft an innovative campaign, Mountain America executives were able to accomplish multiple goals cooperatively, true to the credit union spirit.

Does Mountain America have plans for next year?

“We'll tweak the content so that new employees have a basic course to complete, while those who have already done it will have a refresher course with some new content,” says Suzanne Oliver, senior vice president of educational services. “It was such a success we are considering expanding it to similar courses like Home Ownership and Refinancing next year.”

For more information on Educated Investor University, visit www.educatedinvestor.com/university.