The CU2.0 Podcast

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Your members text.

Especially your younger members but today, really, everybody texts.

That means your employees text too.

So why can't your employees text members with questions and offer them help. pointers, suggestions?

You say there would be compliance questions.

Meet Statflo, a company that specializes in one thing: compliant texting software and it also specializes in tools for credit unions.

Is it hard to get started with Statlo?

Listen to this podcast with Evan Bush, head of sales and partnerships at Staflo, who explains that in fact it is easy to get started using Statflo's tools and a credit union also gets to pick the pricing plan that works best for it.  How easy is that?

A Statflo special ingredient is that its texting is done by human beings, not AI, and those human beings work in your branches, using tools and techniques developed by Statflo to get maximal results from texting.

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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Talk about miracles.

River City FCU in San Antonio knew it wanted to make small business loans - many of its members owned and/or worked in small businesses - and you have to know how hard it is for any small business to snare a loan. Then up the degree of difficulty if the small business is minority owned (and River City's membership is majority Hispanic).

How can those typically small loans be profitably made?

And then the miracle happened.

Compliance Systems, a provider of compliance documentation tools, realized that CDFI credit unions - community development FIs - were looking for ways to get more involved in business lending.

Along the way Hawthorn River, a developer of community banking software, hopped into the action.

So did IMM, a develop of e signature and digital transaction tools.

For Jeff Ivey, CEO of River City FCU it was put up or shut up time and he did not blink. He was all in.

The exceptional deal sweetener - Compliance Systems, IMM, and Hawthorn River agreed to donate their work, both because it simply was a wonderful thing to do but also because they now have available a tool kit that will let them put into place small business lending at many small credit unions.

This sounds like a Christmas fable? Indeed. But it is a reality and in this podcast you will hear how it came together, how it is working out, and Ivey as well as executives from the three tech companies all offer perspectives.

Here's a link to a press release with all the details.

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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 A machine just maybe can pick stocks better than a human - and just maybe credit unions can augment their investment services by offering a new robo-advisor service from longtime fintech Access Softek, a 36 year-old Berkeley CA based fintech that offers online and mobile banking and more to hundreds of FIs.

Now Access Softek founder and CEO Chris Doner wants to put a robo-advisor service as well as self-directed brokerage tools in the credit union investment toolkit.

The timing couldn't be better. With inflation galloping, cash in a savings account increasingly looks like a money losing proposition and, for sure, some members will be investigating shifting money out of savings accounts and into stocks - which often means shifting that cash out of the credit union and into another kind of institution.

That gets more perilous because many of those institutions already offer things that look like checking accounts.

Not only might member wallet share be lost it might come close to vanishing.

Sure, right now just a handful of credit unions offer robo-advisor services - but it's a trend that is catching on elsewhere.

Plus, many credit unions are scrambling to find new sources of fee income and robo-advisory tools plus tools for self-direct brokerage accounts may be just the ticket.

Even better, Doner's investment tools are based upon fees paid by the members who use them and those monies are split with the credit union.  The pricing is very favorable to the institutions that climb aboard.

In this podcast Doner tells about his investment tools for credit unions and he also disclosed why he has never sold his company.

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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Now the US Congress is weighing in on credit union boards and Chris Otey, an executive with CU 2.0 but importantly for this podcast, board chair at South Bay Credit Union in California, tells what he likes about the H. R. 6889, the Credit Union Board Modernization Act, which now has been voted out of committee and will come up for a vote in the full House.

The bill has bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.

CUNA has indicated support. Ditto NAFCU. 

What would it do? It's narrowly focused legislation that would allow most credit union boards to meet six times annually rather than the currently mandated twelve. 

That's it.

But Otey is plain that as board chair he thinks this would be a very good move. He tells why in the podcast.

Remember to tell your member of Congress and US Senators how you feel about H.R. 6889.  

And, by the way, this podcast is a coming home for Otey.  He was the guest in the first podcast - click here to listen.  It's not exactly as big a landmark as the first Rolling Stones album but, for credit union geeks, it may rate right up there.

Listen up.

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There has to be a better way. A safer way. There has to be a way to swiftly let  a member re-set a password to gain entry to his/her accounts and to also defeat the account take-over criminals who specialize in seizing control of others' accounts and swiftly draining them.

Know this: the criminals who do this are an industry.  They are professional.  And they work fulltime at this.

Case in point: in the podcast Abrar Ahmed, CEO of Cozera Solutions, relates that criminal gangs will patiently call the same credit union, failing to win entry to the accounts they lust after but what they are doing is gathering intel. Pretty soon they know all the challenge questions and that means they also can know the answers.

A credit union needs to know how to fight back.  id-go, a Cozera Solutions' tool, is one such way.

Cozera Solutions explains how it works its magic: "id-go replaces discoverable secrets like passwords and one-time passcodes with strong passwordless biometric authentication so there are no secrets for attackers to steal. To protect privacy, authentication is executed with device based biometrics that never leave the consumer's device."

In the podcast, Ahmed says that deployment of this tool to members is fast and seamless and can proceed with essentially no tech heavy lifting on the credit union's part..

The company is still in start-up mode but has already implemented its tools at four credit unions, a sector Ahmed is focused on.

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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 Tools, not tips, that's what those with damaged credit need to get themselves on the path to credit improvement.

Right there is the guiding credo of Credit Mountain, a new CUSO that Cornerstone Foundation, the charity wing of Cornerstone League, helped birth. 

Credit Mountain successfully ran a pilot with seven credit unions and now is looking to offer its app through more credit unions.

In this podcast, you will hear from two Credit Mountain founders. The first that you will hear from is Frank Santoni, chief product officer. In a recent CU Times piece he is quoted as saying, “Credit Mountain blends the member-focus of credit unions with emerging technologies to deliver a personalized credit-improvement experience."

The other voice is Nathan Pinto, CEO.

Both founders are strong in the belief that credit unions have a unique role in helping those with damaged credit heal themselves - and they believe their tool will help in that journey.

Listen up.

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 You are going to want to listen to this podcast twice. That's because the first time you hear it you will think, this can't be so. It can't be that easy for a credit union to connect with fintechs and have all the compliance and integration and all that complex and expensive stuff just, well, handled by this Utah based open banking company I have never heard of.

Then you will focus on this: Asa now is in a BECU sponsored fintech incubator and two things are true about BECU: it's a savvy, shrewd credit union and it knows technology.  If BECU says Asa is worth a close look, count me as hunting for my spectacles.

In this podcast Asa founder and CEO Landon Glenn explains in considerable detail - but in a way friendly to non propeller heads - just how Asa works its magic act.

Note too: Glenn tells here about discounted pricing for credit unions that get in the Asa queue pronto.  It really is a sweet deal for early adopters.

He also tells the benefits for the credit union - it gets to offer a wide range of cool tech to its members and that means it also can offer niche products because the integration is easy; it benefits fintechs but making it easy for them to align with credit unions; and it benefits members by letting them remain credit union members but still use and enjoy the tech they crave.

 "The industry continues to grapple with how to keep up with skyrocketing demand for innovation in a safe, secure and affordable way," said Landon Glenn, CEO and founder of Asa in a press release. "With Asa’s collaborative banking model, financial institutions and fintechs are finally able to join forces, connecting customers with a marketplace of fintechs without ever having to share sensitive data or credentials. Such a model is a win for the bank, fintech and end customer. We are proud to be accepted into the BECU FinTech Incubator, and we look forward to continuing this momentum and growth."

You have to hear more?

Of course.

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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Here's the big, immense, mind blowing idea that is central to this podcast: a competitive credit union has to view executive compensation as a strategic initiative, really no different from putting investment money into a CUSO or  rolling out a spiffy new mobile banking app.

Understand this: NCUA regulations explicitly allow this allocation of capital.

And grasp this: unless a credit union has invested in creating a first-rate leadership team it won't have the staff capabilities to make the most of its capital investments in more traditional vehicles.

With leaders it's as simple as you get what you pay for...and the results your credit union gets are determined by the leaders you have invested in.

That's the bold idea put forth by Kirk Kordeleski, onetime CEO at Bethpage Federal Credit Union, one of the nation's biggest, and now an executive at OM Financial Group, which specializes in SERPs which are building block retirement plans for key credit union executives.

In the podcast Kordeleski offers more than his big idea. He also spells out, in some detail, the steps a credit union needs to take to keep its executive team competitive and what the coats are likely to be.

Note to board members: if you want to know what these steps will cost your institution, you will find out in this show.

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

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 2022 credit union compensation is utterly different from 1992 comp plans, even 2012 plans because now competition for talent is so much fiercer.

Hear episode one in Money Talks here.  It's not a prerequisite for understanding episode 2 but it does offer more insight into the credit union exec comp landscape.

Have suggestions for topics to explore in this show? Email me, Robert McGarvey - [email protected]

Listen up.

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 Steve Bone, a longtime fintech executive, has been given the big chair at Ongoing Operations - aka OGO - and now he is running the CUSO's efforts in providing credit unions with Business Continuity Planning (BCP), Disaster Recovery, Information Security and more.

Bone is just a few weeks in the job - taking over from Kirk Drake (hear his recent podcast here) -- and he is full of optimistic ideas, from leading a shift to the cloud to helping small credit unions, even $100 million institutions and smaller, get world class information security services. That last is important as cyber criminals - including many abroad working in tandem with their governments - increasingly are targeting smaller FIs because most have porous security and, as Willie Sutton said, that's where the money is.

OGO customers of course want to hear this show but so do just about all credit unions because Bone here outlines a lot of the pressing, critical IT issues credit unions face.  

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.

You probably know Drake is also CEO of CU 2.0.

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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 Kirk Drake spent 15+ years conceiving, building, and nurturing Ongoing Operations, a CUSO focused on disaster recovery, cloud services, and more. Now he is moving on.

He leaves OGO in good hands. The new leader there is Steve Bone, whose podcast focused on his vision for OGO posts Wednesday.

In this podcast, Drake reminisces a little about OGO, muses about the growing role of fintechs in the lives of credit unions and gets downright excited about Painted Hills, a CUSO he birthed and, definitely reads about Oregon's Painted Hills.  Three credit unions - Rogue, Maps, and Carter - are already involved.

You want to hear about Painted Hills because it is intended to help solve credit union balance sheet problems that, right now, afflict many institutions.

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.

You probably know Drake is also CEO of CU 2.0.

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