Credit Union Real Estate Decisions: Listen, Read, Absorb

As part of Filene’s outstanding “So You Want to Talk About …” webinar series, I was pleased to once again participate as a panel member. In this case, the “About” was headquarters and hybrid work.

For the second time, I was proud to be joined by Mai-Linh Hoang, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Marketing for Collins Credit Union headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. With attendees logging in from coast-to-coast, the session was expertly moderated by Cortney Arnold, Filene’s Director of Community Development.

During the session, Mai-Linh provided real-world examples of the innovative approaches Collins CU is taking with respect to their real estate portfolio. From their administrative offices to their branches, Collins is at the forefront in ways to re-imagine and optimize workspaces to better engage with employees, members and their community-at-large. Their vision is both near-term and long-term. Aggressive yet pragmatic.  

My perspective focused on ways we are assisting our credit union clients to research and re-evaluate their real estate portfolios through the lens of their employees and members-of-the-future.  

While many brokers remain locked into the “tried and true” standard of finding available space and brokering deals, we start with listening and learning about our clients’ challenges and vision and then apply our experience and proprietary research platform – Rubicon Reveal – to deliver recommendations based on information that goes far beyond currently available space.

Rather than shoehorn all of my and Mai-Linh’s insights into this post, I respectfully recommend carving out an hour and viewing the webinar session for yourself. In doing so, you’ll learn about Filene’s excellent ongoing research into the changing workplace, Collins’ leadership and our strategic and transactional approaches. Here’s the link.

In addition, I am also providing a link to a recent article from McKinsey Consulting entitled, “The Workplace Will Never be the Same: Imperatives for Real Estate Owners and Operators.”  McKinsey gets paid the big bucks for providing world-class research and strategic leadership and this article is full of insights that can benefit every credit union executive. Here’s the link.  

I’m a fan of both Filene and McKinsey because I believe that effective action must begin with in-depth research. These organizations deliver it and so we wanted to share it with you.