The CU2.0 Podcast

Send us Fan Mail

Arlington Community Federal Credit Union - headquartered in Arlington VA and with assets just shy of $500 million - thought it had its growth plan set.  It would merge with $246 million First Federal Credit Union (headquartered in adjacent Alexandria VA). But then the First Federal members rejected the plan.

So we invited David Martinez, CIO at Arlington Community, on the show to address a fundamental question: is there life for a $500 million institution?

Sure, the vast majority of credit unions are smaller than Arlington Community - but increasingly experts say that the minimum viable size for a credit union is $1 billion.

Spoiler alert: Martinez is here to tell why he believes Arlington Community has a bright future and it starts with knowing the community and serving that community.

Yes, that is the historic credit union success formula but listen to Martinez and he tells that it still is the way to success.

It’s an upbeat show.

Martinez also talks about being CIO at a credit union Arlington Community’s size. Yes, an institution that size just about always will be on the buy side of the build or buy question when it comes to tech but Martinez is convinced his institution has the tech it needs to satisfy members’ needs. Does it have the latest and glitziest - an AI chatbot for instance? It does not - although Martinez admits he has his eye on some possibilities involving non fungible tokens (NFTs) but probably that implementation will be delayed for some time. His point is that an institution can satisfy its members with good, reliable tech that does the job that members really need and want. It’s a good reminder to deliver the basics and do them well.

How is tech recruiting going at Arlington Community? There, Martinez has good news.  Reports had been that credit unions were finding tech recruiting to be a tough slog but not at Arlington Community, not now.

If yours is a smaller credit union - anything under $1 billion - be sure to tune in for what will be a feel good show. Martinez is realistic but he also is optimistic.  

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

Shazam, watch a $10 gift card - maybe one issued by retail goliath Amazon or perhaps WalMart - transform into a $13 gift card.

Can’t happen? Everybody knows alchemy is a hoax?

Meet Prizeout, an ad tech company that says it has the formula for  valuing up gift cards when they hit a consumer’s hand.

On the show today is David Metz, CEO of Prizeout who offers the details of how Prizeout works its magic.

Also on the show is Darlene Johnson, an EVP with Suncoast Credit Union, a Florida behemoth with over $16 billion in assets.  She is a Prizeout evangelist who sees Prizeout as a key tool in her credit union’s member acquisition strategies.

Suncoast also is one of nine credit unions that have formed a CUSO to bring Prizeout to more credit unions.  Other founding credit unions of the CUSO include Interra Credit Union, MSU Federal Credit Union, Patelco Credit Union, Stanford Federal Credit Union, Credit Human, Langley Federal Credit Union, University Credit Union and Collins Community Credit Union.

Look, I get it, it’s hard to believe an Internet pitch that says in effect we’ll take your $10 gift card and make it worth $13 - and you’ll be able to use it at leading retailers and, importantly, also at local merchants in participating credit unions’ geography. 

But give Johnson and Metz a listen and they very well make you a believer.

Know too that the Prizeout CUSO is very much in search of credit union customers, no investment required.

Listen up.

Send us Fan Mail

Talk about Hatfields vs. McCoys. In the world of credit union c-suite retirement planning there are two major competing scenarios. There are SERPs based on whole life policies. And there are IULs, indexed universal life plans.

In this intro I am not going to tell you the difference. That’s because this is a complex topic and on the show is Kirk Kordeleski onetime Bethpage Federal Credit Union CEO and now an executive with OM Financial Group which specializes in c-suite retirement plans.

Kordeleski knows SERPs and he tells the fundamental differences between whole life SERPs and IULs and know that the differences can be substantial.

Are you already in a SERP or an IUL?  Key advice from Kordeleski is to get an annual review of where you stand now.  With credit union c suite salaries climbing and inflation roaring, where you really stand may not be where you had hoped to be.  Get that review and get it soon.  There probably still is time to take remedial steps to get your retirement back on course.

As you listen, keep in mind, a key question in your retirement planning is what is your risk tolerance? And what will it be when you are 65? 75? 85?  And know that we are living longer.  More years have to be factored in.

Listen up.

This show is in a Money Talks series where credit union compensation is untangled.  This show will help some executives negotiate better pay packages and will also help some board members understand the ways in which 2023 credit union compensation is utterly different from 1993 comp plans, even 2013 plans because now competition for talent is so much fiercer.

Hear episode one in Money Talks here.  Episode 2 is here. Episode 3 is here. Episode 4 is here. Episode 5 is here. Episode 6 is here. Episode 7 is here. Episode 8 is here.  

Want to know more about SERPs - or other matters raised in this podcast? Email Kordeleski [email protected]

Have suggestions for topics to explore in this show? Email me, Robert McGarvey - rjmcgarvey@gmail

Send us Fan Mail

Financial wellness + millennials and Gen Z = a huge opportunity for credit unions.

At least for the credit unions that approach wellness for that age cohort with the right tone of voice and mindset.

That’s the core advice offered in this show by Doug Brown, president NCR Digital Banking.  Before that he was at FIS and before that, in 2007, he launched Bank of America’s mobile app.

Brown brings personal experience to this discussion because he has two adult children currently living at home - and, yes, he talks finances with them and in the process has picked up insights into how best to communicate about dollars and cents to younger generations.

His advice to credit unions is to get financial wellness tools - ones especially tailored to Gen Z and Millennials - built into the mobile app.  That’s what NCR is offering and the reasoning is simple. Those age groups use phones throughout their waking hours.  They are accustomed to notifications via the phone and they read them.

Aren’t a lot of them drowning in student debt? Brown offers insights into this issue and he also discussed how credit unions can help show a way out of this indebtedness. It may take time, it will take a plan, but there are ways out.

A bottomline message of this show is don’t give up on bringing in younger members. It may seem hard. But young members are the future.

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

Welcome to Part 2 of the CU 2.0 dialogue on the NCUA’s proposed rule changes pertaining to loan participation and related topics.

The part 1 podcast featured Kirk Drake, wearing his Quilo hat, and Boris, a Quilo co-founder. There’s a link to that show in the notes.  

Here’s a link to NCUA’s lengthy proposed rule changes. 

That same link includes a box for submitting comments. As you will hear in this new show - round 2 - both Kirk Drake and Brian Lauer, a Pennsylvania lawyer who also is attorney for NACUSO, the trade association for many CUSOs.

Lauer has prepared draft comments on the rule - there’s a link in the show notes. Use this as a starter for your own comments and get them in by February 28.

These rules - to repeat - are intended to bring about substantial changes in the credit union world’s loan participations. Very possibly big winners will be small and medium sized credit unions. Fintechs, too, may come out way ahead.

Are there things to worry about in the proposal? Aren’t there always? But to get the full skinny 

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

You probably have heard about CuneXus, the CUNA Mutual company that helps a credit union sort through its members and determine which offers - car loans, personal loans, credit cards and more - this member is eligible for without filling out a loan application.

Read the last six words again: without filling out a loan application.

Think about it: most credit unions already have all the data they need on hand to approve or deny a member’s request for credit. So why not tell the member what he/she is eligible for?

It works. Your CU 2.0 Podcast host personally received a letter from his principal credit union that told me I was eligible for a bunch of things including a credit card. It occurred to me I had no credit card with the institution so why not?  Basically I said I’d take it and, whoosh, it arrived.

On my desk now is another letter from that CU offering me my choice of a car loan, a personal loan, a checking line of credit, or an auto refinance deal.

See how this works?

A couple hundred credit unions are CuneXus users and they are because this is a way to make members more profitable to the credit union while also giving members friction free access to new credit tools.

Enter Union Credit, a new Santa Rosa, CA based fintech with the plan to build upon what CuneXus does by extending the same kinds of credit offers to non members of the credit union. 

This is all about member acquisition, said Dave Buerger, a co-founder of CuneXus and now CEO of Union Credit.  

Buerger is on the show today along with Barry Kirby, also a CuneXus alum and now a co-founder of Union Credit.

Right now Union Credit is available only to CuneXus customers (and CUNA Mutual is also an investor in Union Credit).  That means setup of Union Credit at a credit union will be a breeze.

Face it: filling out a loan application is a hassle.  Who wouldn’t cheer a program that ditches the loan app and says, which product do you want? You are pre approved.  For real.

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

Just when you start to think that things are settling down in credit union land - talk of recession is vanishing, inflation seems to be getting tamed, most experts expect a healthy uptick in mortgages come Spring and even new car sales are growing - here is Henry Meier, onetime general counsel of the New York Credit Union Association with what he believes are big threats to credit unions that many executives just are overlooking.

Spoiler alert: Meier is right.

He outlined his concerns in a 10 point manifesto in Credit Union Times - link in the show notes -  but in this show we will drill into what I see as the really worrisome four.  What are they?

• Lawyers have their eyes on your website and although there have been some suits, brace yourself for more - and more that are better crafted which means they just may win favor from judges.  The industry pay out bigtime to settle ADA suits with respect to ATMs. Could we be in for a replay with websites? Meier offers thoughtful comment, some that will worry you and some that may reassure.  By the way, know reasonably easy fixes are already on hand.
• Members are howling about what they view as fraudulent losses incurred by transactions run through their Zelle, or maybe Venmo, account.  This already is getting some press notice. Expect more because often these are not nickel and dime losses; big bucks frequently are involved.  Your institution better get ready, now, to cope with this.  Problems probably are coming at you.
• Do you know where your data are - and who is profiting from them?  Another recent Credit Union Times story - link in the show notes - documents how a Navy Federal employee employee apparently pilfered member PII and sold it on the dark web. Kudos to Navy Fed - it looks to have handled the investigation itself. But how many other credit unions can match Navy’s brains, muscle and money? In this show Meier relates how credit unions have to own and protect their data - but the job gets ever harder.  Is it become too hard for most credit unions to handle?
• Loan participation is a massively hot topic in 2023. And now NCUA is indicating it wants to help steer these activities. Good idea or bad? Necessary or a waste of time?  Meier has nuanced thoughts on this.  He definitely sees loan participation as important, especially for small and mid-sized credit unions. But do they need a steering hand of the NCUA?

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 big news out of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) is that the agency has proposed significant changes to its regulation regarding loan participation - and all the details are available to be read in the Federal Register. There’s a link in the show notes and that same link takes you to where NCUA offers guidelines for submitting comments on the proposal.

Understand, the language of the proposal is murky - it’s written in inside the Beltway lawyerese.  

That’s why we asked Kirk Drake, founder of CU2.0 and also chief revenue officer at Quilo, an innovative loan syndication platform, to tell what the NCUA is trying to do here.

Joining him is Quilo co-founder Boris Fuzayloff, a veteran payments pioneer.

The bottomline: the NCUA seems to be trying to update its regs to reflect today’s digital payments world, a place where it suddenly has become easy to put loans out for syndication. What used to take a dozen phone calls now takes a few mouse clicks and this is all very good news for credit unions.,

Just maybe particularly for smaller ones that want to spread risk on a big loan to a member or maybe the institution wants to take small pieces of a big loan that another credit union has up for participation in order to diversify its revenue stream.

Keep that in mind: the chief beneficiaries of the NCUA revisions just may be small credit unions.

For another perspective on the NCUA and the participation revisions listen to this podcast with Henry Meier, onetime general counsel of the New York Credit Union Association.  

Hear more on Quilo in this podcast from earlier this year with Quilo co-founder Don Shafer.

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]

Send us Fan Mail

Ignite and preserve. Right there is the motto of rkGoBig, a CUSO with a singular focus: helping smaller credit unions survive and indeed prosper.

That seems a Sysephean task?

Peter Barnard. CEO of CUSO rkGoBig, firmly believes that cooperation among credit unions is a fast way to help more small credit unions survive.

To that end, rkGoBig offers a basket of services include a compliance toolkit - a real help when dealing with the regulator - credit cards, a shared core, card processing, shared back office processing and, well, you get the picture: rkGoBig has the tools a 21st century credit union needs to operate efficiently and effectively.

The biggest credit union presently served by rkGoBig is just shy of $400 million in assets.

Listen up to this inspiring story of helping the small survive.

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

Pick a number and here’s the question: over the last 11 years CEO pay in credit unions has gone up 2% per year, 5% per year, or greater than 10% per year?

Take a deep breath now. 

The answer is 7.5%, said Kirk Kordleski, past CEO of Bethpage Credit Union, one of the nation’s biggest, and now a consultant specializing in retirement plans with OM Financial.

If that number rocks you, grab tight now because in this podcast Kordeleski explains why the CEO who can successfully lead your credit union in today’s hyper competitive marketplace will need that big annual raise and also why he or she is well worth the money.

The reason for both is competition. The number of CEO openings in credit unions is growing and that’s because Baby Boomers (born in the 1946 - 1964 span) are fast retiring.

There’s also just a lot more competition and a good CEO needs a range of skills.  The complexity of the job just is so much greater now than it was a generation ago.

Open your checkbook wide when you are out shopping for a new CEO. It’s just not going to get any cheaper.

Know too that what a CEO is paid directly determines how much the other executives in the c-suite earn and their pay shapes how much just about everybody in the organization is paid

This show is in a Money Talks series where credit union compensation is untangled.  This show will help some executives negotiate better pay packages and will also help some board members understand the ways in which 2023 credit union compensation is utterly different from 1993 comp plans, even 2013 plans because now competition for talent is so much fiercer.

Hear episode one in Money Talks here.  Episode 2 is here. Episode 3 is here. Episode 4 is here. Episode 5 is here. Episode 6 is here. Episode 7 is here. 

Want to know more about SERPs - or other matters raised in this podcast? Email Kordeleski [email protected]

Have suggestions for topics to explore in this show? Email me, Robert McGarvey - rjmcgarvey@gmail

.