Q&A with Jim Moore: Executive led credit union through changes, challenges

Jim Moore dreamed of a career in broadcasting — not the military and certainly not financial services.

But he spent only a year in the broadcasting industry. Instead, he wound up spending the better part of his adult life in high-profile positions with the Air Force and Colorado Springs-based Ent Federal Credit Union.

Moore, 67, retired Friday as senior vice president of Ent Federal Credit Union, the largest financial institution in southern Colorado with more than $3 billion in assets and nearly 200,000 members along the Front Range. He also had spent three years with what is now Chase Bank, and a year with what is now Armed Forces Bank.

Moore graduated from Indiana University with a degree in radio and television and worked a year at a small Indiana radio station. But as the possibility loomed of being drafted into the Army at the time of the Vietnam War, Moore decided to join the Air Force. He served 26 years before retiring as a colonel in 1992, virtually all of it in public affairs.

“It was as close as I could get to broadcasting,” Moore said.

The Air Force also paid for him to get master’s and doctoral degrees at University of Denver.

He joined Ent in 1996, as marketing director, and was later promoted to vice president and senior vice president. He has served as the credit union’s spokesman and supervised its marketing and corporate philanthropy since joining Ent, but also helped Ent start new operations in corporate lending, investment services, insurance and trust services. He introduced the first advertising campaigns in Ent’s history, launched a rebranding campaign with a new logo in 2005 and has written a blog for the past year for the credit union.

Moore has served eight years on the Memorial Health System board of trustees, is senior warden at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church and serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board for the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs College of Business. In retirement, he plans to take some long-postponed overseas trips, organize his 45-year photo collection, do some writing and commentary and stay involved with local nonprofit organizations.

Question: What were the most interesting moments of your Air Force career?

Answer: I was assigned as commander of Armed Forces Radio and Television at Wheelus Air Force Base near Tripoli (Lybia) in August 1969 for a two-year tour, but that changed on Sept. 1, when a group of junior military officers led by Col. Moammar Gadhafi overthrew King Idris I. The base would close nine months later and during the time leading up to the closure, Air Force Broadcasting was an important morale and welfare booster for those closing down the base. The most challenging tour was at Patrick Air Force Base near Cape Canaveral, where we supported the public affairs efforts of the Space Shuttle flights and the test ranges in the South Atlantic Ocean. We supported the second through the 17th shuttle missions and I met (television news anchor) Jane Pauley, (Edwin) “Buzz” Aldrin and (the late) Ellison Onizuka, who was killed in the 1986 Challenger explosion. I was sent to Colorado Springs five years before I retired to become public affairs director for the U.S. Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, where we worked in space support of the first Gulf War and hosted a visit of (former British Prime Minister) Margaret Thatcher.

Q: Why did you go into banking when you retired from the Air Force?

A: I had never worked in banking before. (Former Affiliated National Chairman) Dick Gillaspie invited me to re-establish a marketing department and training function. I went through an analytical process of what situation would make me most energized, productive and satisfied, and drafted a résumé around that. I looked at where I believe I had made the greatest contributions and I compared that with the Affiliated position and highlighted the similarities; 75 percent of them matched. Dick encouraged me to take the job, so I said, “What the heck, I’ll give it a try.”

Q: Can you describe the most challenging time you spent in the banking industry?

A: The first two or three years at Ent were challenging because we were involved in making a cultural change, following the direction of the board of directors that had hired Charles Emmer to change the focus of the organization. We had to implement a difficult decision the board had made. (A computer glitch had not picked up $1.2 million in automated teller machine transactions, forcing Ent to collect that amount later from 12,000 customers.) There were new procedures and we started to think about how we did business and served members. We had some growing pains to go through. There was a lot of doubt and fear from people who were successful in the old model. The day I knew things were OK was when I started seeing temporary license tags on the cars in the parking lot; that showed that people were confident enough to buy a new car.

Q: What did you learn about yourself in your banking career?

A: I am more an initiator than someone who maintains a new initiative. I am good at starting something, not running it. In the Air Force, you get your feet on the ground in the first year of your assignment and in the second year you are putting your programs in place, while in the third year you get ready to move. Charles saw that and over the years I was involved with new programs in collections, corporate lending, investment services, insurance and trust services. I also had a hand in providing disaster-recovery services to smaller credit unions in the state, corporate philanthropy and strategic planning.

Q: How do you see the banking industry recovering from its worst financial crisis in decades?

A: It is an interesting and challenging time for all financial institutions, and not just with regulatory changes that are coming. While the so-called Great Recession is probably over, it has been a life-changing experience for many people who are reducing their debt loads and saving more. My expectation for the next 10 to 20 years is that we will see much more conservative behavior by consumers. The days of consumers mortgaging themselves to the hilt and running their credit cards to the max and then taking out a home-equity loan are over. That will mean a new model for financial institutions who have made most of their revenue on interest from loans. How they survive, I don’t know, but there will be real changes. There will probably be a lot of simplification in the financial services business.
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Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and brevity. Contact the writer at 636-0234.