March is National Credit Education Month

March marks National Credit Education Month – a month dedicated to educating members about all things involving credit.  Credit is important because it’s a major factor in financial well-being.  If you have healthy credit, you likely have healthy finances. However, there are many consumers that don’t know much about credit and many new and future credit union members need to learn more as they grow their wealth.

As we focus on credit this month, we challenge your credit union to do your part in educating members about credit and here are some ways we can help you with that initiative.

1. Social media is a great way to push out tips on how to improve credit or tips on what credit is. One strategy might be to do daily tips on improving your credit over the month. CU Members will be featuring weekly tips on Facebook for members to learn more about credit.  Feel free to like and share these across your pages.
2. We may not be very social these days, but just because you may not be ready to host an in-person education session, doesn’t mean you can’t educate your members with an event. Webinars and podcasts are more popular than ever as communities look to learn more virtually. Tackle the topics on how to pull credit and evaluate it for discrepancies, what makes up your credit score, how to increase your score, etc. A section of our CU Members homebuyers seminar includes information about credit and the information can easily be used as a separate session. Check it out in our on-demand training section at cumembers.com.
3. Educational flyers can be handed out or emailed to members. CU Members has many helpful educational flyers within the marketing library of our website. They include information such as understanding your credit score, what impacts your credit score, how to improve your credit score, etc. These can also be used as educational content on your blog, website podcast or videos.
4. Educate your members and your staff. Some of your staff might be well versed in handling their own finances, but do they know how to share this information with your members if asked? Your staff will have ample opportunities to steer members in the right direction when working through questions or providing service. Internal training is just as important, if not more so, to educating your members.

National credit education month provides an opportunity to grow your member relationship and help them determine and achieve their financial goals.