During the 2020 planning cycle, the Heartland Credit Union (HCU) Board of Directors adopted a global ends policy that calls for members and potential members to be financially literate and financially independent. In response, staff has further developed HCU’s financial education and counseling programs.

Over the past year, HCU has researched and studied one market that tends to be under-served yet holds much potential: the Hispanic market. In August 2021, HCU applied for a grant from the Heartland Credit Union Charitable Foundation (HCUCF) to help fund a research partnership between HCU and Coopera Consulting, a full-service multicultural analytics and consulting firm, to complete research and analysis into the demographics of our own membership and the potential with the Spanish-speaking market in the communities we serve.

Research from the Pew Research Center in 2020 showed that half of the total population growth in the U.S. from 2010 to 2019 has come from those of Hispanic origin. Specifically, the U.S. Census Bureau has stated Hispanic population growth in the U.S. between 2010-2019 was up 20 percent and the total population of Hispanics to be just shy of 61 million. Furthermore, the Census Bureau estimates the Hispanic population will reach more than 87 million nationally by 2040.

Despite their enormous and fast-growing spending power, financial inclusion is generally an issue for the Spanish-speaking community. According to a May 2019 Federal Reserve report, 11 percent of Hispanics in the U.S. are unbanked (without a checking or savings account) and 23 percent are underbanked (have a bank/credit union account but also rely on alternative financial services such as money order, pawn shop loan, payday loan, etc.).

HCU’s research engagement with Coopera revealed valuable data that we would not have had otherwise.

• HCU’s current Hispanic membership is 6.5 percent, which at the time of the research (year-end 2021) represented approximately 2,000 members.

• Average age of HCU’s Hispanic members is 39.7 years, as compared to 46.2 for non-Hispanics.

• The average tenure of Hispanic member is 6.3 years, as compared to 9.0 for non-Hispanics.

• Checking account penetration among Hispanic members is 46 percent, as compared to 48 percent for non-Hispanics.

• Hispanics account for $16.1 million of consumer loans at HCU, which represented 6 percent of the total at the time of research.

• Seventeen percent of members at the Salthawk Center are Hispanic, which is the largest percentage for any HCU branch.

• According to Coopera’s research and algorithms, 82 percent of HCU’s Hispanic members prefer English, 11 percent are bilingual, and only 7 percent prefer Spanish.

Having this data in hand allows HCU to better plan on how to best serve the growing Hispanic market. Since work with Coopera concluded, the HCU board of directors have reviewed and approved recommendations on how best to proceed over the short-term and longer-term. An internal task force has been appointed to make these plans a reality.