Todd Hall, President & CEO, Truliant Federal Credit Union

In an interview with Invest:, Todd Hall, president and CEO of Truliant Federal Credit Union, discussed member service, the proposed merger with Piedmont Advantage, technology, community investment, and the credit union’s outlook. “We will keep investing in our people, hiring good employees, caring for our culture, and educating people throughout our markets,” Hall said.

How did Truliant perform over the past year, and where has it invested?

The last year has been a good one for Truliant. We performed well across the board, and we feel we have done a good job supporting our communities. We have invested in our people, the financial education we provide in our communities, and our digital offerings. We have also increased the amount of money we are lending to our communities and around the country, including to small businesses and Main Street America.

It is a challenging economic time, and many people are having difficulty making ends meet. Our performance helps us support them as we wait to see what the economy and future hold.

What is driving growth while preserving Truliant’s member-focused model?

It is about focus. Our members, like society as a whole, want seamless interactions with the organizations they do business with. They want services at their fingertips, when they want them, and they want the experience to be smooth. We spend a great deal of time and energy on technology, and our digital experiences are improving rapidly. We hope to continue that progress over the next couple of years.

We are also deliberately paying higher dividends and interest on members’ deposits because we know they need it, and we are able to do it. Our revenue streams are diverse by design. When conditions affect one part of the business, such as lending, other streams help us continue to perform well. That has allowed us to be among the higher-paying institutions in the market for dividends on CDs, money market accounts, and checking accounts.

We also rolled out a checking account product that includes benefits like cellphone insurance. Those benefits can help people minimize expenses by more than $100 a month, or more than $1,000 a year. 

What is the rationale for the proposed merger with Piedmont Advantage?

Piedmont Advantage has operated in the same Triad and Charlotte markets as Truliant for more than 70 years, so it is a natural fit. Many of our members and their members already use both credit unions. We know them well, they know us well, and we believe the engagement can be seamless.

The combination would bring many of the offerings we have as a larger, more complex credit union to Piedmont Advantage members. We have engaged significantly with their employees since the announcement, and the response has been extremely positive. We are excited about adding their 88 employees to our staff. They bring talent and enthusiasm. Their employees would benefit from our benefits and culture, while their members would gain a broader package of services.

We believe in scale, particularly on the revenue side. Technology, skilled technology employees, facilities, branches, and regional headquarters are expensive. Those investments help communities feel that we are embedded and invested in them. Meaningful revenue from multiple streams makes those investments possible. Piedmont Advantage would also add about 25,000 to 30,000 members to our member base.

Where does Truliant see geographic opportunity?

I am a Columbia, South Carolina, native, and my wife and I are both South Carolinians. Before joining Truliant, I spent 25 years as a banker and lived in Greenville during one of those roles. I recognized that the people in the Upstate could benefit from Truliant’s value proposition, and there was not a credit union of choice in the area when we wanted to expand.

We believed Greenville and surrounding markets, including Easley, Greer, Boiling Springs, Spartanburg, and Mauldin, could benefit from our community giving, financial literacy work, and products. We like the Upstate, and other parts of South Carolina may fit our future footprint. We also like Southwest Virginia, where we have a couple of branches, and may expand further there.

How is Truliant using AI, and where can technology benefit members?

AI is front of mind as we consider how to incorporate it into our business model for the benefit of employees and members. We have used AI in consumer underwriting for about five years. It helps remove human bias from decisions about a person’s ability to repay a loan. It looks beyond a credit score and considers about 200 points related to an individual’s behavior. We believe that allows us to lend more deeply than many competitors.

Members can also benefit from AI in fraud and compliance. Many people are being defrauded through phone calls, texts, emails, and other technology. We hope technology can improve the experience around card purchases and other financial scenarios.

We have invested substantially in AI, but processes must be designed for automation, and data must be in a format that makes the technology useful. We have had our own data warehouse for five or six years, and we need to enhance it. Members want personalization. They want us to understand their needs and be there when they need help, and data technology can help us understand members better as individuals.

How is competition changing the member experience?

Fintechs have changed the landscape significantly. Members want services that are quicker, easier, seamless, and easier to understand. Our digital presentation of loans, deposits, and information has to keep improving. If someone wants to borrow or deposit money, that experience needs to take only a few clicks.

We think about competing with Chase as a representative of the large banks and SoFi as a representative of fintechs. Everyone in between is trying to determine how to remain relevant and meaningful over the next decade. We believe our value proposition is strong, but we must deliver it in the way members expect.

How does Truliant support employees and its communities?

We first need to be an employer of choice in the communities where we provide jobs. We are culturally driven and accept people for who they are. We want good people who want to contribute. We want people who want to help others and be the colleague everyone else wants to work with.

We support that culture with benefits. Employees who receive an annual physical do not pay their medical premiums because we cover them. We match the 401(k) at 6%. With about 1,000 employees, we want to be one of the better employers in our communities.

Our foundation, community development group, and at-work group focus heavily on financial literacy. We help people understand how to save, buy a house, consolidate debt, and borrow responsibly. 

We are also directing more community dollars toward community colleges and trade education. Those skills can help people earn a good living and support their families. Our scholarship work will increasingly help people of different ages attend two-year trade schools. We also support communities through lending. We are the largest credit union originator of SBA 7(a) loans in the country, and our P1 group helps businesses finance large commercial insurance premiums so they do not have to absorb the full cash-flow impact at once.

What are Truliant’s priorities for the next three to five years?

Truliant is a low-income-designated credit union. At least half of our members live in low- to moderate-income census tracts, and the actual figure is 65%. We expect the next three to five years to remain difficult. Inflation is not going away, and the economy will be challenging.

We will continue investing in quality technology so members have an experience that is easier, better, and simpler to understand. We will keep educating people about improving cash flow, saving money, and buying a home. We have offered members a five-year adjustable-rate mortgage at 5.25%, which is about 1.5 percentage points below current fixed rates, with the goal of helping people become homeowners. Homeownership is an important path to economic improvement.

We will keep investing in our people, hiring good employees, caring for our culture, and educating people throughout our markets. Technology will be the biggest pursuit: making our experience as simple as, or simpler than, Chase or SoFi so people can access the value we provide in the way they want.