The CU2.0 Podcast

Send us Fan Mail

Talking about money. Talking about pay. At credit unions.

Now do I have your attention?

On the Money Talks show today is regular guest Kirk Kordeleski who has brought along J P O’Connor, a credit union compensation analyst, who has joined PARC Street because key to architecting the right SERP retirement package for a c-suiter is pegging t to the right salary.

Not all credit unions are paying c-suiters appropriately, not when market rates are the bedrock, and, no, there are few if any cases of credit union execs who are significantly overpaid but there are plenty of cases where they are underpaid.

Says who? Says J P O’Connor who has the data - the market research - to back up his views on salaries.

What makes a compensation market appropriate? In the show O’Connor gives details about exactly this.

Are you underpaid? Overpaid?  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

Send us Fan Mail

News flash: Every credit union does not have to use NCUA’s National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund.

Repeat: does not.

Alas, federally chartered credit unions have no choice but to use NCUA's insurance product. But state chartered institutions do have a choice.

Meet Theresa Mason, CEO of American Share Insurance which provides primary share insurance to around 100 state chartered credit unions in 10 states and it also provides excess share insurance to cover accounts up to $5 million and that’s a product NCUA doesn’t offer.

American Share Insurance’s Excess Share insurance subsidiary also is the insurer for the Military Banking Facilities aka Community Bank that now are operated by Navy Federal. NCUA said it couldn’t insure this because the National Credit Union Act prohibits coverage of non credit union assets.

The MBF operates 60 MBFs and 272 ATMs at DoD facilities overseas.  In the show Mason relates how her company scrambled to put together the needed coverage - it’s a good story of innovation on the fly.

Mason, in the show, talks about plans to expand American Share Insurance’s footprint into more states.

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

Send us Fan Mail

Can a credit union serve more than one employer group? You know what today's answer is of course. But to know the history you need to talk with Marc Schafer, the now retired CEO of Truliant, a Winston Salem credit union.

In the mid 1990s Truliant was sued by a bankers group that claimed it was illegal for a credit union to serve more than one SEG.  The bankers won.

The story did not end there.

Credit unions mounted a huge legislative push and the result was passage into law of HR 1151 which made it lawful to serve multiple SEGs.

Schafer had a front row seat throughout the battles.

Listen up.

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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

Send us Fan Mail

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.

Listen up.

Send us Fan Mail

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]
 
 

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

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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

Send us Fan Mail

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]
 
 

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