Business View Magazine | January 2021

273 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2021 PEOPLE ’ S CREDI T UNION Island back in March, People’s Credit Union’s management team had gathered to hammer out details of their strategic plan. The pandemic has put a spin on those plans, but it has been a valuable learning tool. Daly reports, “We are actually taking the opportunity – if you can – of this situation to relook at everything. Looking past COVID to where we want the organization to go, we’ve incorporated things like remote work and digital customer service into our strategy planning.” Future planning for People’s Credit Union is a bit less rigid than before. “We’ve introduced to our board the goal of having a rolling strategic plan,” says Daly. “I think COVID taught us that we need to have more of a flexible planning process and, quite frankly, with my background outside of banking that’s pretty typical, but it’s unusual, especially in the credit union space.” Now, he says their focus is on the digital member experience, with a better online banking presence featuring more tools and functionality as well as the ability to provide member service through digital channels. They will also be launching new core values that better reflect the behaviors and principles that are needed to service their members going forward. Daly took over as CEO in November – he and most senior management have been with the credit union for under two years. He admits, “There’s a lot of things we are doing as an organization that are kind of a refresh across the board. So, we are spending the time that we have now to get ourselves prepared for these changes. Once we get past the pandemic, we’ll be able to leverage the momentum that we’ve built helping our members with the planned changes to come out of this stronger than when we came in.”