By Robert McGarvey

It’s become a gripe fest.  People complain that they have to work at home, that the supermarket shelves are stripped of toilet paper, and – above all in the circles in which I move – we complain that business travel is basically on hold and just about every meeting and event has been cancelled.

That might seem fodder for lots of ranting from me in these columns. But, personally, I am struggling to stifle it.

Yes, I am impacted. Yes, trips have been canceled. Events have been canceled. Even a milestone college reunion of mine has been postponed.

Yes, the ineptitude inside the White House has made a fraught situation wretched – and it is hard to explain why there are nowhere near enough test kits, why the White House communications are packed with lies, and why six to eight weeks were lost due to incompetence at the top.

But here’s the deal: complaining would do no good.

And the cancellations and isolation that are our norms today are apparently doing some good.

The Skift headline frames the issue: No, It’s Not Fine to Keep Hosting Live Events. 

People have gotten sick with the coronavirus due to meeting attendance.  Proceeding with a meeting or event is foolhardy. That’s why so many have been canceled. 

Ditto business trips.

Sure, I get it, if the White House had not been inept we probably would have made much greater progress in taming this disease. But it wasn’t and so we use primitive but probably effective techniques such as social distancing and self quarantines and the impacts on life as we knew it have been profound.

But many have it a lot worse than we do.  I groan when I think of my canceled college reunion – I am Reunion Chair! – but then I think of the millions of college kids across the country who have in effect been evicted and told they are doing tele courses, like it or not.  Yes, I can see big lectures working fine as tele courses but many of my classes were small philosophy seminars with maybe a dozen students and lots of discussion and argument. How does that work now? And what about the social learning that makes college such a useful and perhaps distinctly American institution?

Then there are the impacts on the neediest. Andre House in Phoenix, which nightly feeds 500 or so homeless, has put its sitdown dinner on hold. Sacks of food will be distributed instead – but wouldn’t you much prefer a sit in a convivial atmosphere where volunteers treat you like you matter (and I have volunteered a number of times).  The homeless won’t starve. But they will be deprived those human moments that for many made dinner at Andre House special.

Now think of the many whose employment has been cancelled, or at least hours and income have been sharply reduced. Tens of thousands of restaurants are closed, or trying to make it on delivery only, and literally millions of employees and thousands of owners are scrambling to make it another week.

Think of the tens of thousands of flight attendants whose hours have been sharply reduced.

Or the hotel housekeeping staff who don’t have rooms to clean because there are no guests. Innumerable hotel workers face unpaid furloughs.

In China, it is difficult to see any recovery of the hotel business this year and maybe not next year.

Italy has major recovery struggles ahead.

Big questions loom. Will business travel ever return to its previous levels? Will events and meetings? Will flygskam rule?  Maybe our old habits will never resume.  

Etc. etc. and before we even get to the recovery phase we have to get out of the sickness and death phases and we have to be ready to mourn perhaps millions.

Easy it is to complain – and trust me I was annoyed when I saw shoppers last Saturday had stripped a central Phoenix Whole Foods bare of frozen pizza, dry pasta, and of course toilet paper, dish soap, and hand soaps.

But who to complain to?  

So many of us, in a panic mode, have slipped into a comfort zone where hoarding produces a kind of comfort and cursing out people who cancel our events seems normal.  It may not be rational but it is how we seem to think.

Do I want to look in a mirror and shout at myself?

No, that’s why I keep telling myself to stay cool.  It’s not easy. Not these days. But what better strategy do we have?

by Robert McGarvey

The questions are tumbling in: Can my boss force me to travel in the age of coronavirus? And I have much more often heard the flipside: My employer has cancelled all employee travel but I want to go, in some cases to a conference, in the other on sales calls to a potential whale of a new customer – and how hard is that opportunity to ignore?

And if you go, you just may ride in a private plane!

Whoa, who saw this coming – but who saw the head of the Port Authority diagnosed with coronavirus?

First off: as for my plans I still have travel on my to-do list and I have no plans to cancel. But I have made no firm commitments to air, that is, I am hanging loose. My advice to all travelers is similar. Make bookings that can be cancelled easily, certainly that can be changed without fees (and many air carriers are offering that flexibility). Right now we are deep in the age of the unknowns so operate accordingly.

I will not tell you what to do however.

But can your employer? Should your employer? Should you listen?

Let’s tackle the easy question first. Probably an employer can in fact force an employee to travel, even in an era of coronavirus, but it would be unwise to force employees to go to, say, China or South Korea. Noted employment lawyer and Forbes contributor Tom Spiggle, “Employers need to think about how it will look when they are forcing employees to travel to countries that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Department of State warn people not to travel to.”

China is effectively a no per the US Dept of State, and South Korea isn’t much better.

In the New York Post, employment columnist Greg Giangrande tackles the question, can an employer force an employee to go to Italy which by the way is singled out for a CDC Travel Health Notice which says avoid all non essential travel. Giangrande’s advice: “Even if the chances of contracting the virus are remote, given the current travel restrictions and government advisories, you have every right to decline and not suffer any recrimination as a result. “

But here’s the deal: I am actually hearing more from employees who want to travel than from those who don’t – and yet a growing number of cautious employers are banning employee travel, from 21st century behemoths such as Amazon to legacy employers such as Ford. Part of the logic is that a traveling employee could pick up the virus – then infect the workpace when he/she returns.

But that employee could pick up the virus in the supermarket, at a movie theater, in a shopping mall, at a house of worship – the list goes on and it’s not only in travel that our chances of exposure rise. Yes, we have greater risks in many foreign countries (here’s the CDC data, here’s WHO’s). But coronavirus definitely is spreading in the US.

What do you do if your employer says stay at home?

Face reality: such policies usually aren’t hard and fast. If you have a chance for a face to face with a heavy hitter in Italy, say, or New York – and you are comfortable with the risks (and have researched the facts) – my advice is go to your boss, lay out the case for going, offer up a fallback if in fact you get infected (“I’ll self quarantine and will work at home for as long as it takes” – or whatever prescription will work in your company) and very probably you will get an okay to go.

My experience with companies, Fortune 25 and 15 person businesses alike, is that there are rules and then there are the exceptions. If you want to be the exception, come up with the argument, state it succinctly and you just may get the green light.

Don’t ask to go to conferences – they are on just about every company’s don’t lists. But a good sales call, an intimate meeting with a small group of heavy hitters, a potential merger or acquisition target – those remain reasons travel will be approved.

And maybe make a grab for approval of travel by private plane. Am I nuts? Know that many, many executives are fleeing common carriers in an age of coronavirus and flying private because it’s perceived as the healthier way to fly. Rates are up, but what price health?

by Robert McGarvey

When a credit union buys a bank, has something terribly wrong happened?  Listen to bankers and you will think the answer is a loud yes.

Even some credit union veterans agree.

But it is the bankers who right now are creating the loudest noises.

Are they right? Why are these mergers occuring at all?

First off, some perspective. In 2019 there were exactly 16 credit union-bank mergers.  There were 271 bank-bank mergers.

And yet here is the Independent Community Bankers Association shouting that the Devil is at the door, or words to that frightened effect: “ICBA and the nation’s community banks are calling on Washington to stop pressing the snooze button and wake up to the risks of aggressive, growth-obsessed credit unions and the costs of their taxpayer-funded subsidies,” ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said. “With credit unions abandoning their founding mission in the name of expansion and risky lending, it is long past time for Congress to level the playing field between community banks and credit unions while reining in the National Credit Union Administration’s expand-at-all-costs agenda.”

The ICBA also announced a Wake Up campaign to warn the public about the perceived dangers of the tax exempt status of credit unions.

And yet, in a conversation with Keith Leggett, longtime senior economist of the American Bankers Association, now retired but who still writes his Credit Union Watch column, Leggett told me that when a community bank does a deal with a credit union it is because the bank is out to get the best deal for its shareholders and when that is a credit union, so be it.

Continued at CUInsight

By Robert McGarvey

Call it deja vu all over again: A March 2, 2020 Travel Weekly headline screams: “Latest targets of fraudsters are hotel and airline loyalty points.”

I first recall writing about this in 2014: The Hilton HHonors Hack: Loyalty Programs Under Siege and How to Protect Yourself.   

Again in 2015: United’s MileagePlus, American’s AAdvantage Loyalty Programs Have Been Hacked.

I wrote about it most recently a year and a half ago in this space: Do You Know Who’s Stealing Your Airline Miles?

You might think the bad news is that nothing has changed. You’d be wrong.  The worse news is that, yes, nothing has changed and cyber thieves – knowing we now have so many ways to accumulate miles and points – are more energetically emptying out our accounts because, apparently, neither hotels nor airlines have done much to batten those hatches and secure their loyalty program against pickpockets.

What’s the allure for crooks? As I wrote in the Hilton story six and one-half years ago: “Huge buckets of Hilton points – sometimes in the hundreds of thousands – have shown up in hacker bazaars, where one vendor, for instance, offered 250,000 points for $3.50. At the Hilton shopping mall, an Apple iPad Air 64G is yours for 489,000 points – so at that criminal exchange rate, maybe $7 (payable in Bitcoin) will grab it. There are other, reported cases where around $10 in Bitcoin bought enough points to claim over $1,000 in hotel room nights.”

What a deal.

The Loyalty Security Association meanwhile estimates that 1% of airline mile redemptions are fraudulent.

But that number may be growing, oddly in part because of a consumer friendly gesture on the part of carriers. Reported Travel Weekly, “Jeff Wixted, vice president of product management and operations for Accertify, an American Express subsidiary that provides fraud-prevention services, said loyalty fraud has especially accelerated in the past 15 to 18 months, with fraudsters buoyed recently by the growing trend among airlines to do away with point expirations.”

That of course meant there are more miles to steal from more inattentive consumers.

Wixted added that the value of US loyalty accounts is around $100 billion.

US consumers belong to some 3.8 billion loyalty programs, according to Clarus.  54% are inactive and those dormant accounts of course are prime for thievery.  If you haven’t checked your Delta account in years, would you even notice if miles had been pilfered?  Of course not.

I know I wouldn’t and, yes, over the years I’ve left multiple airline and hotel loyalty accounts go fallow and I have no idea if the zero balances I see are because the vendor wiped the account after X months of inactivity or if an enterprising thief hoovered them out.

Amex’s Wixted, by the way, predicted to Travel Weekly that the value of loyalty fraud will eventually eclipse the value of credit card fraud.

As for how criminals get our loyalty program details, the surest answer is the many breaches suffered by travel companies.  From Starwood to BA, there have been massive breaches involving hundreds of millions of us, probably billions of us all accounted.  

Experts warn that many of us also fall victim to phishing schemes – where we get a tasty offer from what appears to be a known travel provider, we respond with our program details and they are off to the races, while not only don’t we get the proferred deal, our loyalty balances are emptied out.

Criminals also are known to erect sham great deal pages where they harvest credit card and loyalty program info from bargain hunters who stumble in and can’t resist a prime New York hotel room at $49, for instance.

Know this: smart crooks increasingly are determined to rob our loyalty points and miles and they are succeeding at this larceny.

That does not mean the situation is hopeless.

Here’s our best defense: check loyalty programs regularly. My habitual practice was to review an account only when I wanted to cash in miles or points.

No more. Now I check the few accounts I  have decided to maintain – three airline programs, two hotels, one credit card – monthly. I do not rely on the hotels and airlines; their track records don’t breed confidence. So I provide my own vigilance.

Nope, I have detected no fraud.  

You might want to check more often, or maybe quarterly.  A right answer varies with how many miles and points are at stake.  And what those balances mean to you.

But accept this: in 2020, protection of our loyalty balances is on us.  

by Robert McGarvey

When a credit union buys a community bank is that dancing with the devil?

Welcome to the CU2.0 podcast with your host Robert McGarvey. Today’s guest Keith Leggett, now retired Chief Economist with the American Bankers Association who still actively writes his blog, Credit Union Watch.

The topic of the talk: bank – credit union mergers.

Some banking experts are up in arms about these mergers.  Not Leggett.  He says community banks that are up for sale generally are looking for the best valuation and credit unions, in some cases, are exactly that as they seek to add new business capabilities – especially in business lending – and a fast route to that capability is buying the right community bank and retaining key staff.

On that note. listen to the CU 2.0 podcast with retired SECU CEO Jim Blaine, whose ideas are referenced by Leggett. We also discuss Maine Harvest, a new charter, and Leggett points to research on credit union bank mergers via Filene, also the St. Louis Fed.

Numbers to remember. In the past two years there have been around 400 bank – bank mergers. There have been around 20 bank – credit union deals.

Meantime, Leggett tempers his positive perspective on bank – credit union deals by saying there needs to be a two way street, that is, the regulator needs to lighten up about credit unions selling out to banks.

Why do bankers so often loudly scream about bank mergers with credit unions? A lot has to do with association politics, says Leggett, who adds that there’s always a stronger response when a wolf is said to be at the door.

Listen here

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

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

by Robert McGarvey

Here’s what the US government is telling foreign travelers to the US, business travelers very much included: Just stay home.

The numbers of foreign arrivals are plummeting, a reality that long predates the coronavirus scare. Here’s a Washington Post story from July: More people are traveling the world than ever. But the number coming to America is dropping.

Of course coronavirus is making matters worse but know this: even when the virus is tamed, foreign travelers will stay clear of the US. And this means business travelers – maybe business travelers in particular – who will stay away from trade shows, expos, conferences, even in person sales calls.

Why? “Crossing U.S. borders has never been easy, but today’s business travelers face an unprecedented range of issues amidst a constantly-shifting legal and regulatory landscape. Within the past month alone, the U.S. government has rolled out three new sets of travel restrictions: an expansion of the ‘Trump Travel Ban,’ a so-called ‘birth tourism’ ban, and a travel ban designed to contain the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus from China,” said Rebecca Bernhard, a partner at the international law firm Dorsey & Whitney specializing in U.S. immigration and labor and employment law.

Bernhard continued: “Travelers must be ready for increasingly-hostile questioning from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents about the nature of their travel, itinerary while in the U.S., and whether their planned activities violate U.S. work authorization laws. Without fluency in facts, travelers can be refused entry and even permanently banned from the United States.”

You read right: she said hostile questioning. And if a traveler fails the quiz, or worse still, gets annoyed by the questioning, expect border delays to extend. That traveler may even be turned away.

Welcome to the US, baby.

How did we get this hostile? Here’s the big change, per Bernhard: “Travelers should be prepared to face ‘law enforcement’ culture at the border.” She added that we all need to expect this “enforcement-oriented environment due to President Trump’s administrative priorities.”

International travelers need to know you may be quizzed about your travels – and you need to know the details, warned Bernhard. I will confess that I have often traveled and not known where I was going to be the next day until I checked my itinerary. What did it matter? I was trying to be “Be Here Now” and in many cases, a “handler” simply told me where to go and so I went. But apparently it may no longer be good enough for foreign travelers at the border. Know your travel details.

Also know that your electronics are fair game, said Bernhard. The CBP personnel may want to search your devices – that means your phone and laptop – and your best bet is to carry little or no data cross border. Leave it in the cloud. Bring a burner phone.

This is sounding like a lot of hassle? You bet. And where there’s hassle we often just don’t go and that’s what smart foreign executives are deciding when a possible US trip looms on their schedule: “Send the junior person, boss. I’m too busy to go.”

How did we get to be a place to be avoided?

What’s this to you, you’re a US citizen? Listen up. First off, Bernhard warned that “4th amendment evaporates at the border – most normal rights are suspended, even for U.S. citizens.”

That also means your electronics too, which CBP may seek to search even if you are a US citizen. Yes, a judge has ruled that searches of a US citizen’s electronics without a “reasonable suspicion” are not Constitutional. But we are still discovering what amounts to a “reasonable” suspicion. Me, I am continuing to leave most data home which of course also is a good idea when traveling into most other countries (China, Israel, Russia may top the list of places to never bring data). My work is in the cloud, I travel with a cheap, old Chromebook and I now have a burner phone with little data on board.

But here’s my biggest worry about how our border policies will impact me: We are treated at the borders of other countries as we treat their citizens at our borders. Don’t be surprised when on your next trip to Singapore or Shanghai or Tokyo or Sydney you are subjected to the third degree. It’s noting personal. Just payback for how we have treated them.

This has always been true. As we treat others so shall we be treated and, right now, we are treating foreign nationals miserably at the border. It will be likewise for us. Instant karma.

by Robert McGarvey

For years I have pondered a puzzle: why do financial institutions spend so much on cybersecurity and employ wonderfully smart and talented people – but the results are not as good as one would hope.

Frequently financial institutions simply are whipped by their criminal opponents.

Just look back on how DDOS – distributed denial of service – brought innumerable institutions to their knees a few years ago.  It took months for credit unions to get it together to repel the attack.

Then look at ATM jackpotting. New account opening fraud. ATM skimming. The list could go on and on but you get the message: criminals often outwit credit unions and banks and that is despite the money spent and the talent employed.

Why don’t credit unions gain the upperhand?

Hear the related podcast with Authentic8 CEO Scott Petry here.

A new report, sponsored by cybersecurity firm Authentic8, involves a survey of 163 financial services professionals, and it tackles just that question: why do financial services firms so often fall victim to cyberattacks?

Here’s a hint at the reason: “Financial firms have some of the best-funded IT departments of any industry, that’s no secret,” said Scott Petry, CEO of Authentic8. “What’s perplexing to me, with data breaches and privacy violations at an all-time high, is how deep the divide still runs between IT, compliance and legal professionals in many firms.”

The report’s title spells out the problem: “Surprising Disconnect Over Compliance and Secure Web Use at Financial Firms.”

Keep reading at CUInsight

by Robert McGarvey

You know the hideous story of the Diamond Princess and the equally grim tale of the Westerdam, a Flying Dutchman vessel that sailed from Asian port to port trying to find a place that would let its passengers disembark. This is the worst of times for the cruise industry, with many experts saying booking are down 15% and more – and nobody is saying how many passengers have tried to cancel their reservations.

And then there is this Pollyanna moment from WHO, the World Health Organization, which wants you to know that cruising is safe. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program said in a press briefing: “People who say we should steer clear of cruise ships or steer clear of airports or steer clear of certain ethnic groups and steer clear of other things, we have to be really careful here. We need an approach to managing risk that allows us to continue to operate as a society while minimizing the risks.”

He added: “These are manageable risks and again we need to reflect on the fact that the vast majority of these cases are within China.”

I am sure the Diamond Princess passengers are relieved to hear Ryan’s assurances. Not.

Thousands of them spent two weeks in their cabins, by order of the Japanese government. The US government then flew home hundreds of them – but on arrival on US soil they are required to spend two weeks in a government mandated quarantine.

How would you like to spend a month of your life that way?

The Diamond Princess had 500+ cases of coronavirus.

I have written about cruising for maybe 20 years. I have been on many cruises. Generally I am a big fan of cruises – for some destinations a cruise is the ultimate travel modality. The Greek isles, for instance. Ditto Alaska.

Generally, too, I believe cruising on today’s modern ships is quite safe.

But I have also studied exactly how fast – and how virulently – norovirus has spread on cruise ships and this has happened often in the past 20 years. Globally, there are an estimated 685 million cases of the disease annually, with around 200,000 deaths.

Cruise ships have been particular targets. A ship is a contained environment, many thousands of people are in close quarters, and the disease spreads. As recently as this month a ship was denied docking in Gibraltar and forced to return to England where it had sailed from, after some 89 cases were diagnosed.

Here’s the deal however. Cruise ships have become adept at implementing sanitary protocols to limit the spread of norovirus. Sure, there still are epidemics on ships – but cruise lines are a lot more successful in containing the disease than they were a quarter century ago.

You can’t say similar about coronavirus. In a month, maybe, and I for one definitely hope so. But not today when our ignorance abounds.

Nobody knows how to fight coronavirus, least of all on board a cruise ship and its contained environment.

Does that mean just don’t cruise?

Here’s a more precise question: Would I do a Greek cruise today? A Pacific cruise from Singapore to Hong Kong? A Norwegian fjord cruise?

Consider that an IQ test type odd man out test question because I would in fact do two of the three, but decline the third.

Am I afraid of coronavirus? Strangely perhaps, not so much. Early indications are that this coronavirus – specifically COVID-19 – is highly infectious. But its mortality rate appears to be much smaller than, say, SARS or MERS.

What scares the heck out of me are what I do not know about the disease – and neither do the researchers. We are still hunting for best treatment modalities, cures, vaccines, and so on.

What also scares me is the Diamond Princess story. Who wants a four-week quarantine to cap off a cruise?

My advice in regard to cruising is this: avoid Asia cruises. I would not take one. Six months from now, maybe, in fact I would love to – once the coronavirus episode is resolved.

What about other destinations? It’s up to you, not me, not a WHO expert, not your travel agent. Know the risks – and thus far I know of no coronovirus cases on cruise ships in Europe, say. And make your best decision.

In times of rampant norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships I knew dozens of people who refused to cruise because of it. That was their call and they were entitled to it.

The exact same is true today. I can tell you what I will or won’t do. I will not tell you what to do.

Neither should a WHO boffin.

Welcome to Up in Smoke, Part 4 – credit unions and weed.

Buckle up. Dan Mayfield, public affairs director at LeveragePoint, a strategic communications firm in Albuquerque NM, will be our guide in this podcast to the cannabis business in New Mexico. 

Cash, public safety, and a $130 million dollar annual business take. That’s legal marijuana in New Mexico — and right now credit unions are scrambling to help serve this market.

LeveragePoint has a ringside seat and that’s because it is wholly owned by the Credit Union Association of New Mexico.

You heard that right.

That also means it’s playing a key role in setting up the CU Cannabiz show in Chicago in April and Mayfield offers more details on that in this podcast.

Up in Smoke Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here.

Part 3 is a podcast with Paul Stull, CEO of the Credit Union Association of New Mexico.

What’s important here is that cannabis is a potentially huge market for credit unions. It has risks, sure.

But it has a grand upside.

Here all about all sides in this podcast.  It’s a fast ride.

Listen here

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

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

Toke up – the CU2.0 Podcast is back with another look at cannabis and credit unions, a topic we last looked at a year ago in a two part podcast. Part 1 here, Part 2 here.

Welcome to Part 3, 2020 edition of Up in Smoke, credit union style.

Today’s guest is Paul Stull CEO of the Credit Union Association of New Mexico, which is sponsoring the Credit Union Cannabiz Conference, April 5-8 in Chicago.

What this is about is the business of banking cannabis companies, said Stull.  And he fervently believes that cannabis – so far an untouchable for the big national banks – is a prime opportunity for credit unions to build dynamic and profitable business account relationships that involve both deposits and lending.

And this is business that right now the national banks won’t take on.

About two in every three states presently has legal marijuana in some form (medical, recreational or both).

Said Stull: “Most credit unions are involved in banking marijuana money whether they know it or not.”

His argument: do this openly, consciously, charge accordingly and it’s a win win, for the credit union, also for the marijuana business.

In the podcast, Stull offers a deep dive into why cannabis banking also benefits local communities – meaning this is a solid credit union business direction.

The opportunities with cannabis for credit unions right now looks immense.

Stay tuned because in a few weeks another cannabis themed podcast will drop.

Listen here

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

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