This transcript was created with help from Ai. Please report errors to us and always refer to the video as your primary source.

Justin Brady: From Iowapodcast.com, I’m Justin Brady, and have you ever thought about buying healthcare from your financial institution? Said nobody. Said nobody ever. Like, nobody has ever thought that or said that, but some people here in Iowa are actually crazy enough to do just that. Josh Cook, the CEO of Community Choice Credit Union, joins us today to talk about this very thing. Josh, thank you so much for coming on the

Josh Cook: Oh, thanks for having me. I Appreciate it.

Justin Brady: and I should say we were connected because Hy-Vee Health Exemplar Care, which is going to be, we’re gonna talk about them today a little bit, uh, is a beautiful collaborator of ours here on Iowapodcast.com. We appreciate you, they, them sending you in

Josh Cook: Yeah. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad. We’ll find out at the end, right? Yeah

Justin Brady: Sending you into the wolves. Uh, someone over there really doesn’t like you. No, just kidding. Okay, so i- did, did I get this right? Can, can people, like your members, Com- Community Choice mem- Yeah … members, can buy healthcare, like doctor visit, clinical visit, monthly payment- Yeah … from their credit union? Absolutely. Is this a thing?

Josh Cook: I mean, I think it’s a natural partnership, right? If you think about it. So it’s like, why would we offer some sort of healthcare benefit to our members? And really at its core, what are the two probably most important things in people’s lives that they think about? You know, physical health, obviously- Mm-hmm … and financial health. And I think if you think about it, if, uh, financial stress can certainly make you sick, and if you’re sick, that can cause financial stress.

Justin Brady: Sure, absolutely

Josh Cook: I, I think for us it was a, it’s a great fit. I think that what they’re doing is, is really cool. I think of it like kind of a, kinda the way you think of a, a gym membership almost, right? It’s a healthcare membership in a lot of regards where, you know, you pay your membership, and as a Community Choice member, then you can get it at a discounted rate, which definitely adds up for savings. And then you, when you’re going in, urgent care, regular visits, uh, I think there’s 40 generic prescriptions you get. You’re not paying a copay, you’re not paying for that. It’s all included in your membership. So it just seemed like a natural fit for us.

Justin Brady: Yeah. So people, do they go up to their bank teller and say, “I’d like healthcare now”? Yeah,

Josh Cook: no. the easiest way, the, the easiest way. is truly just online, right? You go online to, uh, our website. Uh, you can get to it for Exemplar Care, but through our website, then you can click the link, and that’ll take you right in there so that way you can get the discount on the, on the program as well

Justin Brady: So it, it’s a s- it’s a benefit of being a member.

Josh Cook: Absolutely.

Justin Brady: And obviously it’s not free. It, there’s a, there’s like a monthly fee that comes with it

Josh Cook: Right, correct. But you’re getting a discount on that monthly fee, so it is a, it’s a significant benefit. I think on the single, single individual, I think that adult, it’s around, uh, your savings, geez, I should know off the top of my head. I’m gonna say $140 or more, I think annually, which, you know, adds up still, right? But the fact that every time you go, you’re gonna make a couple… And I think what they’re doing over at Exemplar Care is, I mean, uh, health, uh, uh, expense coverage, insurance, everything you go, I mean, it’s just going up and up and up, right? So what can people do and what can be offered to help bring that down and, and still make sure that people are getting taken care of?

Justin Brady: How does this conversation get started internally in the boardroom? Because does it start out as, “Hey, we should use Hy-” Because this is a thing we’ve talked about on the show- Right … which is you can use Hy-Vee Health Exemplar Care as an employee benefit to your employees. Really cool idea. O- long-term, it obviously lowers healthcare costs for companies. So were you all having that discussion in the boardroom, and then someone’s like, “Bro, what if we just rolled this out to all our members and let our members purchase it through us?” Is this kinda the how things transpired?

Josh Cook: you know- I think, uh- Not bro? We always use the word unbanking- yeah. or unusual or unexpectedly

Justin Brady: Unusual.

Josh Cook: uh, for when it comes to it. You know, I would say like, if you think of Community Choice, we’re not trying to take original banking and just make it different. We actually believe in the idea that we want to be the place where people love to bank, right? So in pursuit of that, we’re always finding ourselves in conversations or partnerships with other entities that are generally thinking about disruption as well, and Exemplar Care would be one of them. So the conversation didn’t even start there. It really started with, um, some other ways that we might even be able to help get the word out of what they’re doing for us to understand it, and then it really morphed into the idea of, “Hey, this could be a great benefit to not only our employees, but to our members,” right? And a great way to get the word out, ’cause right now for us, about 56,000 members right in central Iowa, so, um, great benefit to push out to them.

Justin Brady: Tell me about what you said at the open here, that financial health is, um… You said something about financial health is physical health, physical health is financial health. Um, I mean, this is, this sounds crazy, but only in the last, I would say, three to six months have I learned the l- the, the absolute destruction, like cortisol levels- Yeah have on your health.

Josh Cook: Yeah,

Justin Brady: L- like, you know, I… And, you know, we talk about, “Oh man, stress will kill you.” My gosh, people, it’ll kill you. But when you’re stressed out of your mind, you tend to do poorly on your finances. Or when your finances aren’t s- aren’t so good, you tend to get stressed out and unhealthy. So these things are connected. Yeah. So, um, what’s the long-term impact you hope this makes on your members then?

Josh Cook: Well, I mean, ideally, we want people to be physically and financially healthy, right? I mean, that, that should be kind of the goal, and I think this partnership allows, uh, for that. You know, and there, there is a burden. Like, we see it all the time when somebody’s coming in, whether they’re looking for, you know, lending needs or whatever the case is, and you see it a lot on credit reports of some serious medical debt that starts to stack up, right? It’s a real thing. And to your point, the cortisol levels and the stress, uh, tell me what generally stresses people more than financial stress.

Justin Brady: number one here in this country,

Josh Cook: It’s gotta be number one. It is. Right? For sure. So that financial stress is real. So we feel like we have the ability and tools from the financial institution to be able to help with financial stress. Exemplar now gives us an ability to be able to help people with their actual, you know, physical wellbeing. Um, so what do I hope for the future? I hope that, you know, I think that for our members and other people that, for Community Choice’s sake anyway, that they can kind of perceive us as not just another financial institution, but truly an organization that’s thinking beyond, you know, just loans and deposits, but really kind of being a resource for multiple things in their life.

Justin Brady: Why do something like this? Because f- in my mind, um, I just, I see something like this as adding more complexities in your operations, and I see people saying, “Why even bother? No one’s asking for this. There’s no public campaign to put pressure on us to do this thing. Heck, if we go down this route, we actually might introduce more operational problems for ourselves that we didn’t anticipate. So why bother going, go- doing– Why bother going this direction?”

Josh Cook: Uh, I don’t know. We’re probably too bold in thinking that it’s a good idea we could pull it off while doing everything else. No, that’s a great question, and I think you’re spot on. Um, you know, I watched a, I think it was a Harvard Business Review, like, video series, right? And it was at the time the CEO of Timberland shoes, and the title of his track and what he really hit on was how you can– how to do well by doing good, right? So I think these things in time pay off. You just don’t know where, right? I think by doing well, even if it takes extra effort, even if it’s extra compla- extra, um, complexity to it, if it, uh, it, it takes additional resources or there could be some backfire from whatever it is we’re doing, I think in the end it ultimately is good for us, our brand, and what we’re doing in the community, and we’ll do well by doing good

Justin Brady: Yeah. Do you think, I mean, I don’t know how much, you know, due to HIPAA, I don’t know if that, and, and certain r- laws and regulations you guys are, you guys are under, I don’t, so I don’t know if you can even collect this data, but do you think over the long term you will see deposits and revenue increase because of programs like this? Like, do you think this will, if, you know, people are getting healthier, do you think their deposits will go up and they’ll find more s- I, I don’t know.

Josh Cook: I don’t know. That’s a, that’s a great question. I mean, I think you could draw that correlation for sure as a society, that, uh, if health improves overall, I think financial, um, health improves as well. I think for us particularly with Exemplar Care, that I think what we would see is that as members take advantage of this benefit, right, and actually utilize it, I think for us, you know, selfishly, I think we’re gonna be expanded as a trusted advisor for individuals. So I think we have a really good shot of probably their additional deposits and, and financial needs. But overall, I think you could probably make that argument. I mean, again, if, if you are sick or you’re having any kind of health challenges or you’re delaying health needs, that’s gonna affect you financially, ’cause that’s gonna add additional stress too

Justin Brady: Yeah. No, absolutely. So, uh, let’s back up a little bit, talk about the relationship, uh, with Hy-Vee Health Exemplar Care. How did you inter- like, um, did… I think we talked about this earlier, but I do wanna land the plane on, on one thing I asked earlier, which is did you start out by just rolling this out as a benefit or did, you know, to your staff or did the whole thing just happen at once?

Josh Cook: Uh, pretty much the whole thing really at once. Oh, God. Okay. Yeah. But, but it’s been in conversation for a while. we’ve had conversations about it for a while. What could it look like? Uh, how would we make that work? How do we make the, the handoff seamless and get people to understand the benefit? And I think the biggest point that we’ve talked about internally is what, what you were hammering home is how do, how does this make sense, and how do we make sure that it does make sense? Why would we offer this as a benefit?

Justin Brady: Yeah, for sure.

Josh Cook: But I mean, if you’re gonna go in, right, might as well go full boat. Full send. Full

Justin Brady: no kidding. Uh, I remember when there was a… I think you guys, weren’t you doing yoga classes or something in one of

Josh Cook: We Still do some yoga classes. Yoga classes. Yeah, we’ll still do yoga classes. We did, actually, I think it was, I don’t remember, maybe a month ago, it was, uh, for, uh, the fathers to come down and learn how to do their daughter’s hair. So we had one of those classes as well that was sold out or full. We didn’t sell it, but, um, yeah, all kinds of things like that. Just different stuff. There’s gotta be… Well, where you’re headed, maybe, not to ask myself a question then answer it. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. The question is, you know, why all those kind of things, right? Which is probably ties into the Hy-Vee Exemplar Care partnership

Justin Brady: wasn’t my question, but that’s a great one

Josh Cook: Yeah I, I think that, you know, I jokingly have said for a long time that for the most part, when it comes to traditional banking branches, uh, you, you’d almost rather go to a funeral home than into one of those branches. That’s actually true. Frankly. You know, one thing at least at the funeral home, they’re probably at least gonna greet you, uh, be polite and point you in the right direction. And- You can’t

Justin Brady: the people there, are you generally very quiet?

Josh Cook: absolutely. You, but the, the truth is, is I mean, nobody really wants to go into a branch. Right. Right? So for us it’s then how do you lean in on an experience? You, you already know that we do car loans and mortgages and credit cards and deposits and all that kind of stuff. Right. So, so I think for us, we really lean in on the experience, the brand, and, you know, talking to people at their level and being human, um, and having fun. We always say that we, we take your financial services and needs very seriously. We just don’t take ourselves too seriously, if that makes

Justin Brady: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so I guess to land the plane, do h- your current members and non-members right now, how do they sign up for something like this? Do they just, they go to Hy-Vee Health Exemplar Cares, Cares page and they, like, link their account somehow? Do they have to come to a bank to ask someone? How do, if they wanna do something like this, how do they do

Josh Cook: Yeah, the easiest way is actually to visit our direct website, and then you can link to it directly from there, right off the front page. Right now is where it sits, um, as a benefit or under member, member benefits, and it will take you right to the portal over to Hy-Vee Exemplar Care and get you signed up so you get your discount and you’re, you’re good to go. Um, super easy

Justin Brady: And I suppose they, if people get healthier and healthier, their percentage on the savings account goes up as well. No, I’m just

Josh Cook: That’s right. Exactly. The, the loan interest rate goes down. Yeah, we, we do a full, uh, scan, a test, and you bring in your results, and then you get a better interest rate or a better deposit rate. No, but, but I do– That’s interesting, though, in your question before is, you know, what happens? And I bet there’s some correlation of data that says when a population or, uh, a subset of population does get healthier, how else does it affect the rest of their life? And I bet it does financially affect them in a positive direction. No doubt in my mind

Justin Brady: Yeah. Do you have any feedback yet from, uh, members, from your own employees? Do you have any-

Josh Cook: Not, not a lot of feedback yet that, uh, I could aggregate and actually- Right, talk much on, ‘

Justin Brady: ‘Cause you’re early

Josh Cook: Cause you’re early on Uh, ’cause we’re early on. Yeah.

Justin Brady: When did you start it officially?

Josh Cook: Oh, geez, I should know this off my head. I mean, we actually just press released it. I wanna say that we are only just a little over two weeks

Justin Brady: Oh gosh, so really early.

Josh Cook: Very early, for sure

Justin Brady: Excellent. Well, if you’re a Community Choice Credit Union member and you now have access to this Hy-Vee Health Exemplar monthly very low fee plan because of what you guys are doing over there, which is absolutely crazy. So, uh, who knew that if you want a monthly dependable healthcare, maybe talk to your credit union. Uh, Josh Cook, the CEO of Community Choice Credit Union, any final words before I

Josh Cook: you know what? I had to consult my notes here ’cause I didn’t wanna get it wrong since, uh, I, I was, I was given some of these to make sure I hit. But yeah, no, the member benefit is real. The standard public rate for exemp- Hy-Vee, uh, Exemplar care for an adult would be $89 a month. This gets you down to 75, right? Yeah, So your savings is about $170 a year, which I think is, which is a great benefit. But- Yeah um, no, I think that’s… At the end of the day, I think there’s two things that people should really be focused on when it comes to taking care of themselves, and physical health first and financial health close behind.

Justin Brady: Yeah. Absolutely. Josh Cook, the CEO of Community Choice Credit Union. Thank you so much for coming on the Iowa Podcast and partnering with, uh, our partner, Hy-Vee Health Exemplar Care. We abso- absolutely love them, so glad you’re here

Josh Cook: Appreciate it. Thank you very much