A Conversation With ... Greg Snyder

Last year, Multipli Credit Union merged with River Region Credit Union. Tell me about the goal behind that and what you feel like you’ve achieved so far.
A sign of our times, you’ve got to get bigger to survive – the cost efficiencies that come with that, just to offer more services to our members. We knew the staff up there very well, and they operate about the same as Multipli did. It just made a lot of sense. They were about $500 million and we were in the $180 million range. They had kind of plateaued and were needing that extra boost as well. We’re not totally seeing those efficiencies yet, just in the middle of all of this merger, and then immediately into the next one. About the time we had signed and agreed to merge, Missouri Credit Union had approached us and wanted to (merge) and, again, it made sense to get those operational efficiencies. We’ll have about 80,000 members with all three of us, about $1.3 billion in assets.

With the merger with Missouri Credit Union, how does that expand your footprint?
Their headquarters is out of Columbia, River Region is out of Jeff City, but then they both have branches in each of those towns, so by looking at the Springfield market, it kind of gives us opportunity for all of southwest Missouri. We are getting ready to start building (a branch) in Republic, and we’re looking for a couple additional spots for branches in the Springfield area.

You mentioned the efficiencies and expansion to what you can offer customers. What is a $1.3 billion credit union able to do versus where you were a year ago?
We will offer a lot of the same basic business lines. Consumer loans are our bread and butter. We also do real estate loans, home equity loans, commercial loans. It allows us with size to go a little deeper in all of those product lines. But even just all of the new shiny fintech-type products that people are starting to want and can get on the online banks, it allows us to add those products. For Multipli, we had about 11,000 members, and there’s just not enough members there to spread across those costs. At 80,000, 100,000, you can get those efficiencies. A lot of it is fraud controls. You’d be surprised how much of that is attacking all institutions every day. There’s a lot of software that we needed to buy.

Is there a plan to bring all three credit unions under one name?
It was decided before we inked anything that it is three institutions coming together to create one new one, and so there will be a new brand created. We have the name picked out. Mid-May will be the announcement. Missouri [Credit Union] is finalizing their membership vote; their members have to vote on the merger. If that all goes through, then April 1 will be the legal date of the combined entity.

SBJ’s list research shows Multipli’s membership in the last five years has dropped about 5%; at the same time your deposits were up about 55%. What are your goals for this Springfield region in terms of market share?
In the last couple of years, we did some major just cleanup of database. It made it look like our numbers had decreased where we were just cleaning up old accounts that weren’t being used. We were somewhat flat, but we were gaining in new membership. In the Springfield market, it’s just going to be expanding on service lines. Probably the newest item and a big one for the Springfield market is indirect loans, which is loans being able to be done at the dealerships for car loans. Corwin was our first larger dealership that has signed on.

When you think of a credit union, it’s not always a younger member that you think of, and most credit union members are baby boomers nationwide, according to a McKinsey & Co. article. And now there’s more competition online with banking solutions. What does attracting the younger generation look like for you?
Credit unions, when they first started, they were tied to a sponsor. In Multipli’s case, it was City Utilities. You got younger people tied to that organization. As we started expanding as an industry, we did fight getting that younger crowd. I think a lot of that is in the branding that we do. The Multipli brand was more of a younger-looking brand. Our new brand will help that as well. And then just service line, those are all the kind of things we’re looking at, CashApp type apps that make it easy to transfer money peer-to-peer and all of the fintech that the younger crowd is wanting. That’s all coming.

The Federal Reserve on March 19 decided to hold steady with its federal funds rate. Chair Jerome Powell talked about uncertainty in the market and that real impact on the economy and predicted less growth than expected. What behavior have you been seeing from customers?
The consumer has kind of hunkered down in the last six, nine months. They are feeling the pain of inflation and everything. Kind of weird, in the last month, we’ve really seen consumer loans increase a fair amount and in the indirect area. I don’t know if it’s spring and that is normal, they started car shopping, or if it is economic and they’re worried about tariffs and the price of the car going up, so they’re going ahead and making that purchase. The economy, it cycles; it’s just that up and down, and we’re in a weird spot right now. Some of it is not historical; it’s kind of new territory, but I have full faith in the economy it’s going to work its way out.

You’ve been at Multipli for many years now.
Twenty years today.

Congratulations. Tell me about your tenure and what your new role will be in with the merged credit union.
I’m 39 years in this industry, started very young at age 15 and 20 years at Multipli. I will be the CFO of the new entity. I am the C-level person that is in the Springfield market and will oversee the Springfield market.