Virginia Credit Union: How Financial Health Drives Product Uptake and Profitability

Founded in 1928, Virginia Credit Union (VACU) is in the business of confidence–empowering its members to make sound financial decisions and plan for the future. Yet when it came to showing the business value of its financial health commitments, VACU found its own confidence limited by a lack of reliable data.

VACU offered a robust suite of financial education programs designed to support and strengthen members’ financial health. The organization believed that investing in financial health led to positive business outcomes–like higher product adoption and revenue growth–but was missing the data to prove it. VACU’s team needed a way to measure member financial health at scale to evaluate program effectiveness, demonstrate ROI, and inform product design.  

To meet this challenge, the credit union turned to Attune–a fintech company born and incubated within the Financial Health Network. The Attune platform simplifies and accelerates financial health measurement, leveraging an exclusive license to use the Financial Health Network’s FinHealth Score®  framework within its technology stack, which helps reveal how members are faring across all areas of their financial lives. By providing clear and actionable insights, Attune equips credit unions like VACU to design more effective products and programs, prove impact, and advance both mission and margin.

VACU implemented Attune’s financial health measurement platform extensively across its ongoing financial education programs. This approach included: 

• • Assessing members’ financial health before and after they participated in financial education programs 
  • Establishing annual benchmarks for member financial health by aggregating member surveys
  • Incorporating targeted measurement for key programs, including VACU’s Financial Education for LIFE program 
  • Tracking the impact of one-on-one coaching on financial health 

These efforts quickly established a link between member financial health and business outcomes – giving VACU clarity on what was working and where to focus next. 

Financial Health Drives Increased Product Adoption 

VACU’s 2024 member research revealed a clear connection between financial health and product uptake, with Financially Healthy members adopting 32% more products than Financially Vulnerable members. 

Financially Healthy Members Were More Likely to Use Profitable Products 

Insights also revealed that Financially Healthy members were more likely to gravitate toward higher-margin products than Financially Vulnerable members, including:

• • Certificates of deposit (16% vs. 2%)
  • High-yield savings accounts (13% vs. 0%)
  • Money market accounts (12% vs. 0%)
  • Mortgages (13% vs. 0%) 
  • Cash-back credit cards (20% vs. 7%)

Programming Leads to Financially Healthy Members 

VACU’s Financial Education for LIFE program focuses on youth and young adults in foster care, providing practical education on budgeting, banking, and credit products. Through its partnership with Attune, VACU discovered that the program had a significant impact on financial health. While just 3.3% participants were Financially Healthy at the beginning of the program, 22.6% were Financially Healthy by the end–a nearly 7X increase. 

Member Financial Health Outperforms National Benchmarks 

Using Attune’s benchmarks, VACU was able to measure and compare the FinHealth Scores of its members with national averages. The team found that VACU members consistently scored higher across the four pillars of financial health–spending, saving, borrowing, and planning.