When you have been around as long as Farm Credit, and as successful and consistent as GreenStone, we wouldn’t want to look to the future without also reflecting on the past. The last year held many different perspectives. For some, a record year in the fields; for others, much higher costs outweighed the positives. For all, the year ahead has the potential for similar results.
Thankfully, regardless of what peaks and valleys we leave in the mirror and face on the road ahead, we’re all moving forward together…with stability, partnership, and experience.
Stability:
GreenStone’s cooperative structure means our strength is a result of the success of our members. Our members’ financial and risk management goals require a reliable financial partner, and if the results of 2022 say anything, they certainly say we’re meeting that need! GreenStone’s management team and Board of Directors annually measure our results and stability in three key areas: financial strength, customer satisfaction and employee engagement. We hit the ball out of the park in all three of these areas in 2022.
2022 was another year of record Patronage back to our members as our board declared a payment of $120 million. This is a result of very strong financial results. Record net income of $285 million, loan growth of 10%, outstanding credit quality and operating our cooperative in an efficient manner produced results that would rank GreenStone as one of the best financial performing Farm Credit associations in the country.
Our overall customer satisfaction score climbed back up to 95% “satisfied and highly satisfied” in 2022. This score was one of our best ever.
Our staff also showed confidence in the association, reporting strong results through our Employee Engagement scores in 2022. All of the 14 primary categories measured were improved over 2021. We were also recognized in the Detroit Free Press as a Top Workplace in the state of Michigan with GreenStone being ranked number 4 in the Large Top Workplaces category.
We strongly believe that if our organization maintains this balance of our three-legged stool of solid financial results, customer satisfaction and employee engagement, we will be a stable partner for another 100 years.
GreenStone is here to help our members achieve success, and our culture thrives on doing it right, putting our members first and delivering quality. Today, we have a very strong foundation. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore our foundation if we want to maintain our stability.
With that in mind, this past year GreenStone completed a multiyear “behind the scenes” technology project, implementing a new system we call Journey+, which completely replaced our relationship management system along with loan origination platform and more. While it was thousands of hours of work from hundreds of staff, hopefully none of our customers even noticed! These internal systems are a significant part of our foundation that will allow our staff to provide products and services to our customers more efficiently with consistent and streamlined processes. Journey+ was the most significant technology project GreenStone has undertaken in its history – and it was all managed by our in-house technology team. Now it is being rolled out to six other Farm Credit partners with whom we lead a technology collaboration.
Partnership:
While we’re moving forward, one thing we won’t ever leave behind is our admiration for the partnerships we hold with our members. GreenStone members are served by a team of more than 600 staff all working toward the same mission: To promote the success of our customers and the rural community by being the best at providing credit and financial services.
The thousands of loans closed, miles traveled to connect with customers, phones answered and emails returned, text messages sent and insurance policies secured, income taxes submitted and balance sheets completed, not to mention the smiles shared and handshakes exchanged…to the unknowing eye, these might seem like the same characteristics of workers at any company. But our members know the difference because they experience the little things that take each of these seemingly generic processes and turn them into a special encounter.
Partnership with our members, partnership among our teammates, partnership with our community, partnership with supporting organizations – all of these partnerships are based on trust, shared values, and respect.
Experience:
Another significant aspect to successfully move forward is relying on experience - the experience gained over 105+ years of service – 22 of that as “GreenStone”, learning from our members, growing from history, mentoring our newer employees by our staff who have been working with customers for more than 40 years, hands on understanding from actually being in our customers’ shoes, being involved in our communities – experience makes a difference! And that’s not only true for this cooperative, but it’s also part of each of member’s path as well.
Take the Uhls for example; the experience gained throughout their lifetime is what led them to move forward while returning to their roots. They retired and started a new chapter based on the past, kicking their cattle farm back into business.
Drew Richard’s hands-on experience opened the door to his next chapter, taking stake in the farm he had worked at for so many years and becoming the proud owner of his own acreage and future.
There are thousands of other similar stories among our 28,000 members. At GreenStone, our goal is to help positively support each one with an experienced, stable and personally engaged partner…as we move forward together! Thank you for your partnership!
Best wishes for the remainder of 2023,
Travis Jones Ed Reed
President and CEO Board Chair
This article was originally published in GreenStone's 2022 annual report. You can view the annual report in its entirety here.
