The Latest On BrightLeaf Financial
3/18/2009
Credit Union Profile: Truliant Lives Up to its Motto of “People Helping People”
Truliant Federal Credit Union was founded in 1952 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to serve the employees of Western Electric. First known as Radio Shops Credit Union, it later became known as AT&T Family Federal Credit Union. In 1999, the credit union changed its name to Truliant Federal Credit Union to more accurately represent its broad-based membership which had expanded by then to hundreds of SEGs.
Today, Truliant serves a rapidly growing membership base of more than 185,000 from various communities, representing more than 850 businesses and organizations. Truliant has 25 locations in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio, and embraces an operating philosophy of “people helping people.”
Like all credit unions, Truliant is a not-for-profit financial institution that provides individuals and small businesses with products and services including checking accounts, online banking, certificates and business, auto and home loans.
“You can get anything you want, including trust services, insurance services and even an auto buying service, at Truliant,” Steven Joiner, president of Truliances, the subsidiary of Truliant that offers non-traditional investments, said. “And for middle income Americans, where do you go to get a financial plan – credit unions.”
Steve said that Truliant believes that credit unions have a solemn obligation to help members think beyond the “here and now” and to have financial plans for the long-term. “Everybody should have a financial plan,” he said. “Maybe it’s as simple as helping people create a plan to get out of debt. Even helping people to get insurance is a type of financial plan.”
Truliant’s financial planning evolved out of a retirement planning service called the Retirement Center, but Steve said it became apparent that members, especially younger people who weren’t ready to think about retirement, were not already attracted to the Retirement Center concept. As a result, Truliant launched a more comprehensive financial planning service called TruFinancial Planning, and Steve said that BrightLeaf’s online service is a core component of the service.
“It was pure luck that we met up with BrightLeaf,” he said. “BrightLeaf dovetailed into the TruFinancial Planning concept we were developing perfectly and was actually a prime means for getting it started. As expected, online financial planning has proved to be popular with our members, especially the younger ones.”
TruFinancial Planning is careful not to push the credit union’s investment products and services too hard as part of the financial planning service. “The concept is simply to encourage members to have a financial plan,” Steve said. “At Truliant, we don’t even use the word ‘sell’ as part of the financial planning process.”
“Although we don’t push our products and services, we believe that members readily recognize the value of what we offer,” he added. “Unlike some others, I believe in the ‘put all of your eggs in one basket’ method of handling financial matters as long as you’re providing the best basket, and Truliant does.”
“As we walk members through the financial planning process, they sometimes realize they really can’t afford the fanciest new car or the biggest house, and that’s fine with us,” Steve said. “It’s a real ‘gut check’ for a financial institution to advise someone to get a smaller mortgage or loan, but we believe it’s the right thing to do for the long-term interests of our members.”
To find out more about Truliant Federal Credit Union, please visit www.truliantfcu.org.
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