Just for being himself, Alex Castley got a job at Integris Credit Union as a young executive in Prince George.
Just for being himself at work, Castley was turned into an international corporate celebrity in the banking community last week.
Earlier this year, Castley was named one of this year's Chamber of Commerce Top 40 Under 40 in Prince George, as the engagement and communications manager for Integris. He took that up several notches when he prevailed at the Credit Union Executives Society (CUES) star search for the top young banker on the North American continent.
"For Alex to get even into the Top 5 is like making the podium at the Olympics. And he won the gold. It is only the second time it has ever been done by a Canadian," said Integris spokesperson Dan Wingham.
A statement from CUES said "Castley emerged the winner after a five-part scoring process that included two separate judging panel results, a measurement of his social media engagement, plus audience and online voting," but even that was after making a couple of promotional videos to explain his candidacy, and travel to Florida for the intensive final challenges in front of major CEOs and credit union officials from all over North America. Oh, and a live audience.
"It was nerve wracking for me. It was a little intimidating," Castley said. "The whole experience of it all was way out of my comfort zone, so that was a growing experience, and everything that came of it was gravy after that."
The prize was won, according to CUES, because of the initiatives Castley spearheaded to grow a particular segment of the Integris client base. They were well established with clients of a more mature vintage, but when Castley got the job, he was undaunted by an established pattern of declining rates among those aged 25 to 44.
He put his skills to work, along with a team of motivated Integris colleagues, to boost the credit union's social media profile and a mainstream media campaign full of humour and youthful zest. The underlying serious message was the flexibility and personal relationships offered by credit unions versus large-scale banks.
"I shamelessly stole the term fun-ancial institution from our CEO [David Bird]. We are implementing that," he said.
And after a year passed by, they looked at the resulting numbers.
"It was a 34.2 per cent increase from October 2013 to October 2014," Castley said. "When we looked at the one-year period prior to that, we had an actually negative 10.2 per cent result in that period. We've had decreases at least two years in a row, so we stopped that decrease and in fact saw an upsurge. So it's been lots of fun."
The prize will be even more fun for all involved, since it is a professional development package for Castley worth about $20,000. He gets master classes in professional leadership and other business topics, which he will infuse right back into the Integris operation.
