EDITOR’S NOTE: UMACHA’s annual payments conference will be Sept. 24-25 at The Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center, Minn. Learn more at https://www.umacha.org/nav_pymts.php
Though she’s been involved with the Upper Midwest Automated Clearing House Association for 16 of the organization’s 50 years, President and CEO Angi Farren has stood at the helm only for the last five. Some big challenges crossed the bow during her first year, but they didn’t darken her outlook nor dampen her enthusiasm for helping customers manage their ACH programs. As UMACHA marks its golden anniversary this month, 50-year-old Farren takes stock and prepares for whatever might come.
UMACHA’s original purpose way back in 1974 was to provide automated clearing house services for banks in the Ninth Federal Reserve District. Its aim was to create best practices, efficiencies and education. No small feat, given that UMACHA members range in size from small banks and credit unions (CUs compose 25 percent of membership) to today’s super-regional and multinational institutions. This variety — including the differing regulatory requirements, the complexity of compliance issues, and the depth of expertise required to be successful — is what makes the job exciting, Farren said.
Farren succeeded longtime CEO Fred Laing, II, who had the helm at UMACHA for 35 years. Three months after Laing retired, he passed away. “My first board meeting was a funeral,” Farren said.
Another three months down the road and covid struck and the workplace shifted — for everyone. “It was really a few years into the role that my board allowed me to hire a strategic planning facilitator,” Farren explained.
Even before Laing retired, Farren had to overcome some trust issues at the board level due to an earlier departure and subsequent return. She’d been tagged as “the one who left.” Eventually she overcame the implications of that label.
Recently, UMACHA underwent a branding campaign and marketing outreach, working with Mercury Creative. Farren and her team really started to hit their stride, however, when they embarked on Gino Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System, which she described as an “accountability system” designed to keep the team focused on the future.
Farren strives to deploy EOS to align stakeholders, getting everyone from staff to the board to their team of volunteers, moving in the same direction — and protected from burnout as the organization undergoes marked growth. (Farren protects herself from burnout by immersing in the natural world, focusing on health and wellness, and throwing mud onto her potter’s wheel.)
At the office, Farren’s ultimate goal, she said, is to transform UMACHA to become more of a results-oriented workplace. The concept comes from a pair of books she’s recently read, written by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson: “Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It” and “Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix it.” The books’ concepts are built on providing the trust in folks as long as you can measure their results, Farren explained.
“Work isn’t a place you go,” Farren said. “It’s something you do. I think the pandemic has helped employers realize you have to have more of a flexible workplace.” The EOS scorecard is helping Farren keep her finger on the pulse of growth at UMACHA, which she expects to double in size in the next 10 years.
Twenty years ago, UMACHA launched its compliance services, something Farren said was a huge turning point. With that shift, UMACHA became more than a member dues and education organization. “When we started to provide services, it set us down a path,” she said.
When she first took the reins, Farren embarked on a quest to learn why customers paid their dues every year, even when they didn’t use their services. The answer, she said, came down to the reassurance UMACHA provides. “It’s peace of mind; they can download one of our forms and that saves them from hiring a lawyer,” she said.
In its lifespan, UMACHA has survived a lot of industry consolidation. There used to be 30 payments-focused associations across the country a half-century ago; today there are 10. But the goal must be greater than survival. It must be vibrancy and relevancy. And that requires growth.
“UMACHA’s goal from the outset,” Farren said, “has been to meet its members where they were at with regard to payments issues.” As a payments association, education was a core part of its mission; these days, growth comes through providing customers with the services they need to themselves achieve vibrancy and relevancy.
UMACHA’s growth, yesterday, today and tomorrow, comes about by providing customers with compliance education and consulting services, to financial institutions looking for expertise and help as they conduct their ACH risk assessments, and to helping banks figure out how to manage the complexities of the modern ACH system made more so by increasingly sophisticated fraud and all the other payments modes in the marketplace.
“We have more than 200 members who’ve been here since 1974,” Farren said. She doesn’t take any of that loyalty for granted.
