Why does a company like XDI serve credit union clients exclusively? Other than making credit unions feel special, what’s the real benefit? The competitors in this space don’t appear to limit themselves in this way, but XDI has continued to grow by leaps and bounds despite a self-imposed smaller playing field. Why is that? 

Let’s look a bit closer at this unique choice and how it affects both XDI and their clients. 

With the benefit of focus comes expertise. It’s a bit like going out for a nice dinner. One can generally find a decent meal at a chain restaurant with an expansive menu, but the truly spectacular dining experiences are found where the chef has focused on a singular specialty. 

The same holds true for statement and notice vendors. The large vendors will have credit union documents on the menu, somewhere on page two, and will probably do a pretty good job of it. But the place you really must try is just around the corner. All they do is credit union documents, and they’ve been doing it for over 25 years. 

Why credit unions? What makes them so special? 

Credit unions are not the same as banks. There is a core philosophy of membership in a community at the heart of every credit union, and that permeates every part of the vendor relationship. Credit unions have members rather than customers, and XDI embraces this idea when thinking about how to serve its clients. If the member is happy, then the credit union is happy, so their best interest must always be first and foremost. 

This idea of community extends across credit unions as a whole. It may come as a surprise to an outsider, but XDI has found that credit unions are much more likely to collaborate than compete. This provides an invaluable opportunity to share resources and knowledge amongst mutual clients. There have been many times where XDI has been able to connect one client with another to solve a common problem.  

The great thing about credit unions is how eager people are to help each other. It’s one of the benefits of a credit union focus that isn’t easy to quantify on the bottom line but makes a huge difference. 

There’s also the technical side of things. 

Though credit unions as a whole operate on a variety of core software platforms, there are a handful of leading cores which drive the majority of organizations. This is where decades of focus and accumulated experience pay off in the form of systems that are fine-tuned to— and in some cases built from the ground up around— specific cores. This results in faster setup and turnaround times, quicker troubleshooting and problem solving, and an ability to not only accommodate, but to innovate. 

XDI has leveraged this expertise to produce more efficient documents that use less paper, present information more clearly, and cost less in postage than what someone else could produce. 

There’s another unexpected benefit from credit union exclusivity: reduced postage costs. 

In a previous blog post, we discussed some of the strategies in use to minimize the postage costs, and one of those methods was electronic presorting. In short, what that does is sort the mailpieces that will be delivered together into the correct order so the USPS has less sorting on their end. Any time a mailer can perform this sorting work on their behalf, the USPS provides discounts. XDI doesn’t treat postage as a profit center, so these discounts are passed along directly to the client. 

What may not be obvious is how credit union focus enhances this process. USPS sorting is based on geographical ZIP codes, and the more mailpieces that are pre-sorted and consolidated into the same area, the steeper the discount. Credit unions, as a rule, focus on a specific community and their members generally live in the same geographic region. This allows XDI to submit mailings that are presorted to a level that a more generalized vendor would not be able to achieve. XDI also combines the production output for multiple credit union clients into a single job with maximized postage discounts, while other providers process individual jobs, ultimately costing the client more. 

As you can see, credit union exclusivity benefits our clients in a number of ways. Whether it’s technical expertise, a network of support and collaboration, or simply sending documents for less money, XDI will continue investing in our focus on the credit union community to keep improving. And besides all the tangible benefits that come from this focus, there’s the simple fact that credit union people are great to work with. 

It's been a pleasure to serve the credit union community for the past 25 years. Here’s to 25 more!