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Deposit Growth & Funding

High-Yield Digital Savings Sub-Brand

Launch a ring-fenced, digital-only high-yield savings brand to pull rate-sensitive deposits at national scale — within an associational/community/underserved Field-of-Membership bridge — without repricing your entire core book.

Expected impact · modeled
+$352Knet income / year
+6 bpsROA  0.64% → 0.70%
$12.15Mnet-new deposits deployed

Modeled on a representative $472.67M-asset credit union (peer median) at this strategy’s assumptions. Recomputed on your real 5300 at login. Illustrative planning model, not a forecast or financial advice.

2.94/ 5
Expert-panel rating #169 of 191
Mean across 8 board lenses — CU CEOs (small / medium / large), board chair, McKinsey, private equity, a VC, and Jamie Dimon.
Return3.5
Feasibility2.9
Soundness2.6
Conviction2.8
2.5Small
2.5Medium
3.8Large
2.8Board
3.2McKinsey
2.8PE
3.5VC
2.5Dimon

Directional AI-panel judgment scored on a rubric identical across all 191 — for prioritization, not financial advice.

Where you likely stand — your peer group
78%peer median loan-to-sharetop quartile 88% — higher = more funding-constrained; this strategy funds the gap
0.65%peer median ROAtop quartile 1.01% — the gap this closes
180+CUs in your peer band$400M–$600M assets (NCUA peer groups 5–6)

Benchmarks computed from the NCUA 5300 dataset. At login this recomputes against your credit union’s actual peer group.

Impact
7
Effort
7
Cost
6
Risk
6
Composite score5.7 / 10
Your CU impact · Deposit spread

Impact on your balance sheet & income statement

Seeded with a sample CU — at login this auto-fills from your credit union's real 5300 Call Report (via the ncua.cu-2.com 5300 API). Adjust the assumptions to model your own scenario.

Your 5300 financials (sample — Sample Community CU)
Strategy assumptions
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Balance sheetTodayAfter strategy
Income statement (Δ / year)Amount
⚡ Activate the products for this strategy in bond → High-yield digital savings, Money market, Share certificates

Illustrative model for planning, not a forecast or financial advice. Assumptions are yours. Live version reads your filed 5300 figures; ROA = net income ÷ assets, net worth ratio = net worth ÷ assets.

Why it moves share

Deposit share is the single biggest constraint on a credit union's ability to lend and grow members. Repricing the whole book to chase rate destroys margin on the 80% of balances that never move; a ring-fenced digital sub-brand lets you compete on APY for marginal, rate-shopping money while protecting core relationship pricing. Fund the loan pipeline at the margin instead of buying wholesale, and convert a slice of rate-chasers into full members over time. This is a solid incremental-funding spread play, not a transformational one: at ~3% share growth (~$13M on a $500M CU) and a ~2.1% net spread the NI lift is real (~+5-7 bps ROA) but modest, and the book is built on hot money that leaves the moment you are not top-decile — so the governance workstream is load-bearing, not decorative.

The execution roadmap · 3 sequenced phases

Days 0–30Stand up the ring-fenced brand
Owner: Digital / Product + Compliance
  • Confirm Field-of-Membership bridge eligibility (associational / community / underserved) with legal + compliance sign-off
  • Launch the digital-only brand + account-opening funnel, reusing your existing DAO stack
  • Wire ACH funding, external transfer, and KYC/CIP automation with synthetic-ID controls
Dependencies: Field-of-Membership bridgeDigital account opening
Leading indicator: Funnel live; cost-per-funded-account baseline set
Days 31–60Price it, fund it, deploy it
Owner: Treasury / ALM + Marketing
  • Set tiered APY engineered for a controlled blended cost of funds below your wholesale alternative
  • Turn on acquisition (rate-comparison marketplaces + paid) against the cost-per-account target
  • Deploy inflows into the loan pipeline at ~70% mix — not idle cash
Dependencies: Loan pipeline / MBL cap headroom
Leading indicator: Net-new deposits; blended cost of funds vs wholesale; deployment yield spread
Days 61–90Convert to members, govern the risk
Owner: Member Growth + Risk / ALM
  • Run the cross-sell bridge from single-product saver to full membership (checking, loan, card)
  • Stand up liquidity/ALM guardrails and NCUA Part 740 cross-brand insurance-aggregation disclosures
  • Monitor 90-day retention and the loan-to-share trend; tune tiering if hot money outpaces deployment
Dependencies: ALM/treasury modeling capacity
Leading indicator: Single-to-multi conversion rate; 90-day retention; loan-to-share trend

What to measure

Net new depositsBlended cost of funds vs. wholesaleCost per funded accountSingle-to-multi-product cross-sell rate90-day retentionLoan-to-share ratioNet worth ratio

Prerequisites · Timeline

Field-of-Membership bridge (associational/community/underserved) enabling out-of-area eligibilityDigital account openingACH funding and external transferKYC/CIP automation with fraud/synthetic-ID controlsNCUA Part 740 disclosure controls for cross-brand insurance aggregationALM/treasury modeling capacityLoan pipeline (mindful of the MBL cap) to absorb inflows⏱ 90-120 days

Pressure-test this strategy

Your read as a credit-union leader shapes this playbook — 60 seconds. 1 = weak · 5 = strong.

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