The CU2.0 Podcast

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The Fed just cut its interest rate by half a point and Happy Money CEO Matt Potere is on the show to tell what a credit union needs to do to optimize its performance in an environment of lower interest rates - and those  cuts will impact everything from home mortgages to car loans to the personal loans that are Happy Money’s mainstay. 

The show starts on a different topic however.  The question is why did you join Happy Money - Potere is just three weeks on the job when this show was recorded.

His answer is rich, detailed.

And at bottom he simply is very confident that more credit unions will want to become Happy Money  customers because Happy Money delivers a new member, with good credit, who typically wants to refinance credit card debt at a better rate and Happy Money’s credit unions can deliver on that promise.

Happy Money credit union partners include First Tech, Alliant, Teachers Federal Credit Union and more. But Happy Money definitely wants more credit unions.

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Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

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The press release headline grabbed my attention: “SELCO Community Credit Union Awards $200,000 Grant to SquareOne Villages for the Development of the Rosa Village Co-Op in Eugene.”

SELCO has been on the show before, with Olivia Sorensen,Senior Community Development Specialist for SELCO, talking about SELCO Steps Up, where the credit union thoughtfully seeks to do good in its communities while addressing societal challenges.

In this latest case, SELCO - a $2.7 billion credit union based in Oregon - reached out to SquareOne Villages, which builds affordable housing and got involved with its Rosa Village project which will include 52 units. The units will house the presently unhoused as well as those who struggle to pay market rate rents.

Ingenious on the part of SELCO is that its $200,000 grant was funded to the tune of $150,000 by a grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines which had a 3X match program.

On the show are Sorensen who explains why SELCO is behind this as well as Amanda Dellinger, SquareOne’s Community Relations Director.

Mentioned on the show is a recent US Supreme Court decision involving the homeless and housing. There’s a link in the show notes.

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Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

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James Robert Lay is back with a new book, Banking on Change, and a message that will rock credit union executives out of complacency: “The Age of Artificial Intelligence spares no one from its transformative power.”

This podcast is a fast paced, 40 minute romp through the changes that are transforming banking as we’ve known it into something that looks entirely different.

Consider the words: checking account. Or even more obscure: sharedraft account.  What this is, really, is a spending account, says Lay in the show,  and that’s because we use it to spend our money.

What we don’t do, at least we do a lot less of it, is write checks.

Many consumers now live check-free lives.

Ponder the magnitude of just that change.

To survive through the changes in banking executives need a different, new mindset.  In the show, Lay talks about that mindset and about how to get there.

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Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

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Tom Shen is a fintech success story.  He was EVP at Digital Insight when Intuit bought it for truckloads of cash.  He went on to found Malauzai, a truly innovative mobile banking app.  Finastra bought it in 2018.

Nowadays Shen is on the board of a number of early stage fintechs, he’s an investor, and he genuinely understands what it takes for a fintech to succeed in the unique world of credit unions. He tells how here.

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The show starts by asking Eric Foster, CEO of Woop Insurance, why the heck he named the company Woop, and it gets livelier from there.

Hard to believe a podcast about insurance could be anything other than humdrum.

Believe.

Insurance is going through massive changes as many insurers are dramatically raising rates and/or pulling out of entire markets. Consumers accordingly are scrambling to stay insured at affordable rates.

That’s where Woop comes in.  It feasts on analytics and its aim is to help consumers make better, smarter choices about the insurance coverage they carry.

Foster on LinkedIn describes himself as an “Unapologetic Insurance Nerd.”

But this podcast - while offering specifics about why credit unions would want to work with Woop - is surprisingly nerd free.

It’s informative but smart and lively.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email [email protected]
 
 

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Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

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What’s the second biggest branch network in US financial services?

Guess Wells Fargo and you’re wrong.  It has 5600 branches which makes it the nation’s leader.

But the CO-OP Shared Branching network for credit unions has 5444 branches which puts it in second place.

Chase is third with 4700.

Who knew?

I have thought very little about shared branching in the years I have covered credit unions and I have never done a podcast about it.

So when an email showed up in my box offering Patricia Daley, director of marketing at Ocean Financial Federal Credit Union, as an expert guest to discuss shared branching I had to take her up on this.

Shared branching is a significant credit union advantage but it is not well known. Certainly not by members.

CO-OP says about half of US credit union members have access to shared branching.

Why isn’t a brighter light shined on it?

In this discussion we also take a brief detour into another topic I’ve never explored before - Catholic credit unions because that’s what Ocean Financial is.

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Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

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This podcast started at the CU 2.0 Live event in Arizona a few months ago because that’s where a lightbulb went off in David Eldred’s head.  Chief experience officer at billion dollar Solarity Credit Union in Washington State, Eldred went to the conference already aware of AI but at the conference he began to see that really, truly he could put AI to work at Solarity in very useful ways.

He also learned how, in a matter of short minutes, he could create a very useful custom ChatGPT tool and back at Solarity he got busy doing exactly that.

In the show Eldred gives the specifics of what he’s doing at Solarity with AI and, admittedly, he is taking small steps. But they are useful steps, time saving steps and they are preparing the way for big leaps in the near future.

That’s what makes this such an important episode.  You don’t need a big budget to get results with AI.  What’s needed is a willingness to experiment and a readiness to embrace the new.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email [email protected]
 
 

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Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

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There’s $140 billion in unclaimed federal benefits and assistance for households in need.

That’s a mountain of money.

Why is it unclaimed? Sometimes it’s because folks just don’t know it exists. Often it’s because the process of applying for it can be daunting - especially for the people who need it most.

Enter Starlight, a New York based startup helmed by Catherine Xu and Shreenath Regunathan, both tech geeks.

Starlight’s aim is to catalog the available monies, make a database that’s easy to search and create tools to make it easy to apply for monies.

What’s in it for credit unions?  Think about it. Help a member find monies that will let that member live better and move up the economic ladder and at least two things happen: the member will have strengthened loyalty to the credit union that assisted and that member also may qualify for more credit union products, maybe a car loan or a credit card.

How cool is that?

Four credit unions already are signed up, more are in the queue and TruStage (nee CUNA Mutual) is an investor.

This conversation started back at the CU 2.0 live event in Phoenix that co founder Cat Hu attended and it had to become a podcast because it blends geekiness with doing social good.  

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email [email protected]
 
 

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.
 
 

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

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Call this podcast what you think you know about SERPs but that’s not fact.

Two truths are plain: senior credit union executives want to secure their retirement much as their for profit sector peers do AND there just is a lot of confusion about SERPs - supplemental retirement plans.

A big reason for this show is that in it Kirk Kordelesi, onetime CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union, one of the nation’s largest, and now a partner with PARC Street, shines a bright light on how split dollar, whole life SERPs work and how they differ from IUL plans, Index Universal Life.

A bottomline difference is that a split dollar SERP will produce a stable return whereas there is structural variability built into the results an IUL will produce.

Find out more about that in this webinar with expert Bobby Samuelson and PARC Street Partners. 

Dive deeper into what Kordeleski has said about executive retirement plans in credit unions in the two dozen plus podcasts we’ve recorded. Consider this must listening for credit union c-suiters, board members, and also executive recruiters.

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On any list of my personal favorite CU 2.0 podcasts is episode 149 - it dropped May 2021 - with Samira Rajan, CEO of the Brooklyn Cooperative, a small, scrappy credit union.

How did a Bryan Mawr graduate - who also has a master’s from Harvard's Kennedy School - wind up in Bushwick at a tiny credit union?

She started there in 2001 as a volunteer and these many years later she’s the CEO.

Hers is a brilliant credit union story.

Listen up.