By Robert McGarvey

87% of us want to travel sustainably, said a recent poll via Booking.com. But more of us fail than succeed.  39% said they always or usually travel sustainably. But 48% of us admit we fail.

Business travel is a substantial offender. Said pwc: “Business travel remains our single largest source of carbon emissions, and – as we’ve continued to reduce our emissions from energy – has grown to around 80% of our total carbon footprint in 2017.”

Most big businesses would have to say ditto. Where their pollution is biggest is in travel.

The prime offender of course is air travel:  it amounts to 70% of our total emissions, per pwc.

The more I dig into sustainability and business travel, the more questions and concerns I have.  Suddenly sustainability seems a life or death issue.

One look at starving polar bears ought to persuade you that this stuff is serious, it is way beyond a crunchy granola fear.

Here’s the idea that frightens many business travelers: “The simplest way to cut emissions caused by travel is to avoid it,” said pwc.  

Yep.

I am a product of a time and a work culture where a possible trip produced quick assent: sure, I’ll go.  It could be a convention in Chicago, an angry client in Washington DC, a prospective new client in Los Angeles, or a speech in Boston. It didn’t matter. Sign me up.

Now I am beginning to question every trip: is it necessary? Can I do it via telephone?  

When the impact of business travel was mainly on my time, I shrugged off the time burdens and said sure.  Now – increasingly – the impact seems to be on the planet itself and that is a much bigger issue.

A bonus: traveling less is also good for our personal health.  The evidence is strong that a heavy travel load is bad for our bodies.

That’s another reason to really question our trips.

Do you remember when it was common for a big company to send a few hundred junior execs off to a conference center to spend three or four days learning, say, Lotus 123 or WordPerfect? That was the norm and, for many Boomers, it seemed fun.

Millennials, who today are carrying the bulking of the business travel load, aren’t buying the rationale of that trip, mainly because they know that they could learn new software perfectly well at their desks – with no new carbon hits such as are associated with those those trips of yesteryear to learn new software.

Oh, I also vividly recall a story told me by the VP of HR at a Fortune 100 company where, in the mid 1980s, as a junior exec, he was sent off to one of those trainings where he in fact learned Lotus 123. Just one problem.  When he returned to his office, he still did not have a computer and by the time he got a computer a few years later, he didn’t remember a thing about Lotus 123.

But he did tell me that under his leadership the company was minutely scrutinizing all planned educational meetings – and he hoped to eliminate most.

That’s a harsh reality. As I look back I see a lot of trips that I now see as unnecessary.  

I am a fan, incidentally, of big, glitzy, high energy sales conferences – they pump up attendees in ways that won’t happen when you sit at a desk and watch a video of even a high impact speaker like Tony Robbins.  In person just is more powerful.

Small meetings where intimate exchanges happen also can only be in person.

But a lot of business travel remains a product of habit, of how we have always done business.  And maybe it’s time to rethink.

Right now, hotels are tripping over themselves to announce they will no longer use plastic straws.  Some also are replacing individual toiletries with bulk dispensers. Many others encourage us to use towels and sheets multiple days.

So what?

All those steps are good as far as they go but they don’t go far and if you never use a plastic straw again in your life it will have zero impact on polar bears.

We probably shouldn’t be in that hotel room at all.

What really matters is flying only as necessary.  Using public ground transportation. Walking is better still.

Always ask, is this trip necessary? Really?

What’s the lowest carbon impact to get this business handled?

The encouraging reality is that more of us are genuinely asking those kinds of questions and acting accordingly.  The old days of “sure, boss, I’ll be in Houston tonight, no prob” are over. Maybe we’ll go to Houston, maybe we won’t, and what’s new now is that we’ll carefully assess the alternatives. When flying is the better choice, off we go. When it isn’t, home we stay. And that’s a better reality. For us and for the planet.

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

For CU2.0

 

Talk with credit union AML/BSA staffers as well as senior executives and you will hear a torrent of woe is me complaining about rising workloads, intransigent regulators, too tight budgets, and inadequate resources.

And then there is a new report from Aite Group’s Julie Conroy – based on extensive interviews with over 40 BSA/AML experts – and the title tells you the theme: The AML of Tomorrow: Here Today.

In the second paragraph Conroy puts out the good news: “Advanced technologies such as machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA), and natural language processing and generation are helping to even the playing field by enhancing both detection and operational efficiency. The even better news: Regulators are gradually growing comfortable with the use of these advanced technologies for AML.”

Read that again.  What she is insisting is that financial institutions now have access to technologies that will let them keep pace with – maybe get a step ahead of – criminals who want to launder money.

The stakes are high.  Two credit unions in the past decade have effectively been put out of business because of AML deficiencies – Bethex and North Dade.  

No credit union wants to be linked with money laundering. But, frankly, trying to keep up with this with a small staff who are doing everything by hand is a loser’s tactic.

How much money is laundered annually? Nobody knows. The United Nations has estimated it’s somewhere between $800 billion and $2 trillion.  The high end is about the GDP of Brazil and more than Italy’s.  That’s a lot of money in motion and, accordingly, you have to assume that the people who have put it in motion are savvy, wily, and of course know exactly the defenses used by banks and credit unions.

Accordingly, FIs are spending a lot to defend themselves – much of it on payroll. Conroy cited a report from the Clearing House that estimated that major US FIs spent $8 billion on compliance in 2017. She also noted that one large US FI interviewed for her report employed more than 5000 in compliance and “can’t hire fast enough.”

All those workers push out an avalanche of SARs. In 2013 they filed 1.22 million. By 2017 that rose to 2.03 million.

Conroy also pointed to a numerical disconnect that frustrates AML workers and their bosses.  “the fact remains that there are on average only 1,200 moneylaundering- related convictions per year in the U.S., compared with over 1 million SARs filed per year.”

In other words: is all the work really worth the effort and expense?

It gets worse. In many institutions, said Conroy, business line execs grumble that AML teams are “hassling” their customers, making it harder to do the business that brings in money to the FI.   AML, in many institutions, is seen as a nuisance that wastes money while making it harder to make money.

Ouch.

Wrote Conroy: “All of this points to the need for the AML function to find technology that enables precise detection while minimizing false positive noise.”

She continued: “The trifecta of increasing criminal sophistication, a steady increase in regulatory expectations, and under-resourced AML departments are bringing AML efforts to a breaking point. As a result, financial services firms are beginning to embrace technologies such as machine learning, RPA [robotic process automation], and natural language processing and generation.”

“Today’s AML function can no longer rely on legions of AML analysts, investigators, and rules-based automation. The use of advanced technologies is needed to aid AML departments in the gathering, filtering, and meaningful assessment of data from multiple sources in multiple formats.”

That prescription puts fear in the hearts of many credit union leaders – they worry about the costs and also the complexities of advanced technologies.

But Conroy has this absolutely right. The only way to stay ahead the AML wars is with technology that can automate much detection and even reporting.  There just aren’t enough AML staffers to be hired and so they get paid ever more.

But – and this is crucial – many of them are burning out, even quitting.  

The machines won’t quit on you.

What should your next step be?

In her report Conroy reviews the many technology options out there. Get the report, read her reviews.

And then what?  Her advice is simple: accept that you can’t wait, delay is not an option.

She added: “Try starting small. Cloud-based solutions can be implemented in modules that wrap around or interact with legacy systems to improve performance without a ‘rip and replace’ scenario. In this way, FIs can address the most pressing system deficiencies relatively quickly with less impact to budget and IT resources.”

It’s good advice.

Just don’t wait.

 

 

Big data and your credit union: Black magic or salvation? – CUInsight http://bit.ly/2wt1Ro6

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Highly regarded security researcher Brian Krebs has published a bombshell report that maintains a flaw in some Fiserv banking technology leaves customer data potentially exposed to criminals.

Krebs does not finger credit unions that may have fallen victim to this but there is no reason to think some aren’t.  

Krebs credited the flaw discovery to independent security researcher Kristian Erik Hermansen who noticed that when he setup an alert on his bank account, the alert was assigned an event number.  So Hermansen, on a hunch, tried to log into an event number a digit different and what he found was that he indeed could log in.  This matters because, said Krebs, “In an instant, he could then view and edit alerts previously set up by another bank customer, and could see that customer’s email address, phone number and full bank account number.”

That means a criminal could add his email address to the account and get alerts on, for instance, all transactions.

Krebs also noted that a criminal could hunt for customers who had set up high minimum balance alerts – $5000, say. Which would tell the crook he could siphon out $4999 and he might be undetected for some time.

Krebs said he personally signed up for accounts at two small banks that use Fiserv.  Here’s what he found: “In both cases I was able to replicate Hermansen’s findings and view email addresses, phone numbers, partial account numbers and alert details for other customers of each bank just by editing a single digit in a Web page request.”

He said he found “hundreds” more banks with similar vulnerabilities.

Krebs told Fiserv what he had discovered. The company responded this way: “Fiserv places a high priority on security, and we have responded accordingly,” Fiserv spokesperson Ann Cave said. “After receiving your email, we promptly engaged appropriate resources and worked around the clock to research and remediate the situation. We developed a security patch within 24 hours of receiving notification and deployed the patch to clients that utilize a hosted version of the solution. We will be deploying the patch this evening to clients that utilize an in-house version of the solution.”

Cave elaborated to Credit Union Times: “This is related to a one-way messaging feature on a limited number of bank websites. Upon notification, we promptly developed a patch to update the feature, deployed the patch to clients using the feature and completed testing to confirm the issue has been fully resolved. Our ongoing research and continued monitoring have not identified, and we have not received reports of, any adverse consumer impact.”

There is no count of the number of websites impacted by this flaw.

Any credit union running a Fiserv core and/or online banking ought to quickly contact Fiserv and inquire into the availability of that patch.  They ought also to see if they can replicate Krebs’ hack of the alerts system. And – above all else – check your own systems to see if you can replicate the Hermansen hack.

If you can, take action.

Krebs said that, in his inspection, the Fiserv patch in fact works.  “This author confirmed that Fiserv no longer shows a sequential event number in their banking sites and has replaced them with a pseudo-random string.”

But Fiserv is not blowing trumpets to announce the patch or the flaw.

A scan of Fiserv’s Twitter feed found no mention of the flaw or Krebs’ reporting or the purported patch.   

There’s silence over at Facebook too.

Julie Conroy of Aite told Krebs this about Fiserv’s customers: “These financial institutions use a core banking provider like Fiserv because they don’t have the wherewithal to do it on their own, so they’re really trusting Fiserv to do this on their behalf,” Conroy said. “This will not only reflect on Fiserv’s brand, but also it will impact customer’s perception about their small local bank, which is already struggling to compete with the larger, nationwide institutions.”

What she is saying is that big banks – that ordinarily don’t buy off the shelf technology from a Fiserv – may have a competitive advantage because they build their own.

I’m not sure that is true – I doubt most consumers have a clue as to whether their bank or credit union technology is off the shelf or bespoke.

But Conroy is right: in some ways the big banks keep expanding their technology lead over small institutions. That does not have to be the case. A smart credit union can use fintech alliances to create an institution that is the rival of even the most polished money center banks.

But the credit union has to want to get there.

And a necessary first step is cleaning up that Fiserv mess if your institution is a victim.  Do it now.

 

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Can you do basic arithmetic? Do percentages? Of course you can and, in fact, we learn in fifth and sixth grades how to compute simple percentages in our heads. Quick now, what’s 20% of $100 – or 20% of $250?

Sure, you can do the math. But now some MGM resorts in Las Vegas – notably Aria, Bellagio, and my once personal favorite, Vdara – will tack on a 20% upcharge when you get a massage, facial, haircut, and similar.

Bellagio, on its website, explains the upcharge: “For your convenience a 20% service charge will be added to each spa and salon service received. A portion of the service charge is dispersed to the spa and salon staff members who served you and the remainder is an administrative fee. Additional gratuities are at your discretion.”

The LATimes, in reporting on this, quoted an email from company spokesperson Brian Ahern: “Our employees go above and beyond to provide the best possible service, and it’s important that they receive recognition for a job well done.”

What?

A coerced tip somehow counts as “recognition for a job well done?’

When a masked man puts a gun in your gut and takes your wallet, is this recognition for a job well done?

It’s Vegas, baby.

But it is nonsensical.

It’s picking my pocket to let the employer underpay its employees and why, by the way, is the customer hit with an “administrative fee” when paying a tip?

Don’t ask, there is no answer.

The trouble is that what starts in Las Vegas often spreads, like a bad disease, across hospitality.  Consider resort fees.  Sure, a few Las Vegas hotels shun the practice but most slap a fee – $39 per night at Vdara and Bellagio, by the way – and you got me what you get in return.

Across America, many, many more hotels – some in cities – have climbed on and now impose “resort fees” or “urban amenity” fees mainly as a way to hike room rates without actually hiking room rates.  But that $99 hotel room has become $129 and the culprit is the resort fee.

Now, Las Vegas has decided we are too dumb – or cheap – to tip their salon and spa employees and, oh wait, isn’t it the employer’s job to compensate employees?  Not the customer’s?

It’s Vegas, baby.

A few years ago I ran across a spa in Arizona that hit customers with an automatic 20% tip and when I asked the company president what possibly justified this, he took offense. Didn’t I see that he was providing his spa customers with a convenience? Doing the math for them because, presumably, they are too blissed out by the spa treatment, or maybe just too stupid, to do a simple calculation that most 12 year-olds can do in an instant.

Johnny, what’s 20% of $120?

Jane, how about 20% of $160?

(Hint: just multiply 2 times the first two digits and, bingo, you have the sum.)

I am and have been opposed to mandatory gratuities – anywhere from cruise ships to spas.

I also, some years ago, drove a taxi and gratuities made or broke my night.  If I got stiffed by too many fares, I cursed them and I went home with a lot less dough than I had hoped for.

I understand the importance of gratuities.

But I resent it when they are shoved down my throat.

I am okay, by the way, with Danny Meyer’s campaign to end restaurant tipping and instead build tips into the prices for food shown on the menu. Of course I’ve eaten at enough Meyer places to believe his staff will deliver good service without the promise of a possible tip, or the withholding of one – and the difference between what Meyer believes is right and what MGM is forcing on customers is that Meyer shows one price, tip already built in, whereas in the hotel business there’s a service price and then, by magic, a service charge is tacked on so that $100 haircut now is $120.

With Meyer there is no chicanery. That’s the difference.

Automatic “gratuities” by the way seem rampant in the spa world and you have to ask: why is management so cheap that it won’t pay its employees adequately and why are customers so passive that they go along with this extortion?

Maybe what starts in Vegas really should stay in Vegas.

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

For CU2.0

Ask a senior credit union executive what’s new at his/her institution in regard to anti money laundering (AML), Patriot Act, and Bank Secrecy Act initiatives and the reality is that you will have a longer and friendlier conversation if you asked about his/her last colonoscopy.

Yes, it’s that bad.

And that’s despite the reality that a credit union can be shut down if it grievously botches its BSA and AML analysis.

Buckle up because in December 2016 FinCEN issued a press release where it announced a $500,000 fine against a credit union named Bethex in the Bronx.

Bethex has assets of under $13 million.  

They were folded into USALLIANCE, a Rye NY credit union. Bethex was no more.

FinCEN outlined Bethex’s sins: “In 2011, Bethex began providing banking services to many wholesale, commercial money services businesses (MSBs). Many of these MSBs were located in high-risk jurisdictions outside New York and engaged in high-risk activity, including wiring millions of dollars per month to countries at risk for money laundering. When Bethex began to service these MSBs, it did not take steps to update its AML programs.” 

“Among other violations, Bethex failed to timely detect and report suspicious activity to FinCEN and did not file any Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) from 2008 through 2011. In 2013, as a result of a mandated review of previous transactions, it late-filed 28 SARs. The majority of the suspicious activity involved high-volume, large amount transfers outside of Bethex’s expected customer base by MSBs capable of exploiting Bethex’s AML weaknesses. Most of those SARs were inadequate and contained short, vague narratives encompassing a broad summary of multiple and unrelated instances of suspicious activity. For example, one SAR covered over $906 million in total aggregate of suspicious transactions, but provided little information useful to law enforcement investigators.”

In 2015, North Dade – a small Florida credit union – was effectively put out of business because of AML and BSA violations.  In 2013, tiny North Dade moved over $1 billion in wires, often overseas. According to FinCEN: “When a small institution opens its doors to the world, takes on greater risks than it can manage, and puts profits before AML controls, bad actors are bound to take advantage,” said FinCEN Director Jennifer Shasky Calvery. “This case raises pretty obvious questions that no one seems to have asked. Why would MSBs located all over the world choose a small Florida credit union to conduct close to $2 billion in transactions? Credit unions pride themselves on close and low- risk relationships with known neighborhood customers. However, North Dade welcomed customers far beyond its field of membership, without adequate policies and procedures to ensure AML compliance.”

Face this reality: the big banks have big teams in place to handle BSA, AML, etc. They also have invested – heavily in many cases – in automation that takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of compliance. Machines do the work.

Credit unions – especially the vast majority with assets under $1 billion – generally have not invested in automation for compliance. “There are case management systems that are good. They can be expensive for a small FI.  A lot of bigger banks are using robotics to get screenshots of bank statements and so on – an analyst doesn’t have to spend an hour collecting it. Only the biggest banks are doing this,” said Alma Angotti, managing director in the Global Investigations & Compliance practice of management consulting firm Navigant Consulting, Inc.

Another issue that many small financial institutions now face: “Many employees in compliance are burning out,” said John Podvin, a Dallas lawyer well known in BSA circles.  He added: “There are people in BSA who are asking themselves, do I want to be second guessed all the time. Some are leaving the field.”

A reality in BSA/AML is that the easier course is to file a SAR (suspicious activity report – this documents flags an action for possible investigation by law enforcement). Do that and a financial institution probably has satisfied its regulators. “There is no downside to filing,” said Angotti.

Where the credit union may find itself in a pothole is when it does not file a SAR. In that case the credit union needs to justify why it did not file – and an examiner may well challenge the credit union.

And that means many more hours get invested in explaining and justifying decisions.  Said Podvin: “There are increasing expectations from examiners – that’s the biggest problem now.”

“It’s one thing for a big bank with a staff of several hundred working in compliance. It’s different for a community bank.”

Or credit union.

A result is that slender compliance staffs may be worn down in many small credit unions.

Another barrier at credit unions: there may be “competition for scarce IT resources,” said Angotti. Doing BSA/AML research is computer intensive and, at least at smaller institutions, there may be a battle for resources and ask yourself this: who will win if the fight is between marketing, which needs IT resources to power a new campaign that may bring in lots of new members, and compliance which wants to research possibly suspicious activity by members?

It’s a fight that compliance usually does does not win.

Don’t expect BSA/AML workloads to magically lighten.  

Possible light at this tunnel’s end, said Podvin, is a federal effort to streamline some BSA/AML compliance.  He pointed to pending legislation, HR 6068, as offering hope to financial institutions. The aim of the bill, in its own words, is to “reduce regulatory burdens, and ensure that the information provided is of a ‘high degree of usefulness’ to law enforcement.”

Don’t count on relief until a bill is signed into law.

Meantime, good advice for top credit union management is keep your ear to the ground and ask – and ask again- your BSA and AML teams what issues are they facing and what resources they need to do their jobs better and smarter.  

No credit union CEO wants to increase the budget for compliance work.

But no credit union CEO wants his/her institution to go the way of Bethex.

That makes the choice easier.

 

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By Robert McGarvey

 

New research via Travelport slapped me upside the head so hard I  thought of Mo Howard and believed I was having a Three Stooges moment. Except, apparently, this is reality.

According to Travelport, 55% of us will pay for travel upgrades out of our pocket. This includes better seats on planes, WiFi, and hotel rooms.

The research also underlined how we have in fact become a nation of wimps where 69% of us say we always comply with our organizations’ travel policy. Another 26% say they “frequently” comply.  Meaning that just 5% commonly go rogue.

Color me mistaken.  In the past I have laughed at airline beliefs that we’d pay for seat upgrades – I am apparently wrong.

(I was right, though, in railing that we had become a nation of wimps. Sigh.)  

As for what we told Travelport we’d pay for with our own dough (or frequent flyer miles), 49% said a better airline seat.  52% said a better hotel room. 50% said upgraded hotel WiFi. 50% said upgraded rental cars. Only 19% said there’s nothing they would pay for.

How about you?

I’ll admit I have occasionally used miles to buy upgrades – but I’d earned the miles flying for a specific client and was doing another trip for them and have decided to spend some of those miles for a business class seat.  Taking the sting out of this is that I know the CEO and I know he complies with his company’s coach only policy – but he pretty much never flies coach because he too spends miles. He’s also United Premier 1K so the airline gives him plenty of perks.

But he didn’t ask me to live by rules that don’t apply to him so I have been okay with spending miles on trips for him.

But I can say I have never spent money – mine or a client’s – on an upgraded hotel room (they are fungible to me) and I have never spent money on a rental car upgrade.  Never.

As for hotel WiFi I rarely use it – I consider it hideously unsafe and use cellular hotspots instead – so I’m not buying an upgrade on that.

My policy – going back to my earliest days on business trips and taught me by my bosses – is that if it is legitimately travel related the company should and will reimburse.  If it’s not, forget about it. And there isn’t a lot of gray in that equation.

In those days you could and should bill for a copy of the Wall Street Journal bought at the airport. But not for a Playboy or Mad Magazine.

I also can only think of one time when a client challenged a travel expense and, honestly, I had carelessly passed on a receipt to a secretary who had typed up my invoice. Not her fault. My fault and the client was right to challenge it.

But when it’s needed for work, the employer or client needs be paying for it.  No questions about that, so my policy is to push back against policies that defy my principles.  

Usually, too, my experience is that these are easy wins.  Ask and you get.

A lot of us apparently are no longer asking.

A sliver of good news in the Travelport data is that 90% of us say we are permitted to keep miles and rewards points we earn on business trips.  And I do wonder about the 10% who apparently kick them back into their organization’s coffers.

Also, many of us now use airport expediting services.  43% are in TSA Pre. 33% are in Global Entry. 31% are in Clear.

Often, employers paid for such services.  Just 17% said none of them. (15% said they belonged to none. It’s not clear if many of those 15% work at organizations that don’t reimburse.)

29% said employers reimbursed for TSA Pre. 28% say similar for Global Entry.  23% said likewise for Clear.

Every employer should pay for one such service for employees who travel on business. That is blatantly obvious to me.

A hot button question in the research is: would you let your employer use GPS tracking to monitor where you go when traveling on business?

Understand: it doesn’t bother me that Google knows where I go (I am a Fi subscriber). It also doesn’t bother me that many rental car companies now use GPS tracking.  

But 25% of us say we would definitely disagree with an employer policy of using GPS tracking on us. Another 21 % say they would “somewhat disagree.”

28% like the idea. 17% “somewhat” like it.

Talk about divided opinion.

As for me, I’m not going to take a position on GPS tracking for others. I am okay with it on me. But I won’t insist others think likewise.

It’s a gray area.

But in my mind there should be no divided opinion – no gray area – about reimbursement for business travel related expenses. If it’s a legit business expense the company needs to pony up.

 

 

 

 

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

For CU2.0

 

It was mid 2016 when Brian Best was handed the top job at GTE Financial in Tampa FL and he’s been charging ahead since.  With over $2 billion in assets GTE Financial is among the nation’s biggest but as CEO Best is busy remaking the institution for the contemporary age.

Resting on laurels is not how he sees his job.

He said that a lot of his drive to remake GTE Financial grows out of the recognition that it’s in a different position.  He elaborated: “In our community, Tampa Bay – we have a lot of Millennials. 51% of our members are Millennials.  And they really like digital. They like the ease of access. We believe they also like brick and mortar.  But we know we need good digital.”

Best dated the start of GTE Financial’s Digital Transformation back to 2015  – he was chief experience officer then – and, he said, the institution’s aim has been to win member loyalty with superior experiences. “We want to make sure our experiences are beneficial to our members. Experiences are what differentiate an institution. Products don’t.”

Said Best: “We are 100% focused on what the member experience looks like.”

Think about that.  Most financial institutions offer roughly the same products and – hype aside – there often isn’t much that distinguishes the basic products at one institution from those at another.

At GTE Financial Best is driven to go beyond the basics and drill into what – really – will captivate members.  That’s at the heart of this digital transformation.

Best said a continuing obstacle is that third party vendors “don’t want to give up control of their APIs,” that is, their Application Protocol Interface, which enables communication with the program.  Many tech vendors jealously guard their APIs and, although that is understandable, it also complicates the job of an institution that is seeking to give members a unified experience.

Best added that many vendors also don’t get that “we want to give our members a different experience” – meaning that GTE Financial does not want to settle for the same off the shelf tool kit that is in use in dozens, maybe hundreds of financial institutions.

“What should digital transformation look like,” Best went on. “We believe a member should be able to access – easily – key information in their accounts.” He pointed to an amortization table as a case in point.  Loan customers should be able to easily access it – that table is crucial to seeing ahead with a loan – but doing so just isn’t ways easy.

None of these changes are simple and many aren’t quick. Best said, “Our main competition is ourself.  We have every big bank in Tampa. They are throwing money at digital transformation but their experiences aren’t that great.”

He added: “Our true competition is the Amazons, the digital payments landscape.  If we don’t live in that world we’ll lose touch with the future. It will be ugly for us if Amazon gets into the banking world.”

“Much like Amazon, the experience needs to be intimate even when it is digital. The artificial intelligence has to really understand what the member is looking for.”

“We want to create real intimacy in the virtual environment.”

Read that again. What Best is saying is that the companies that are winning succeed in combining great digital with genuine intimacy and personalization.  

Getting there just may be critical.

Best nonetheless said he is very optimistic, about the future for GTE Financial in particular and for credit unions in general.  “Credit unions have always put the person first – that’s why I started working for credit unions. Night and day difference between our culture and at the banks where I worked. Banks have a different mission. Credit unions will persevere because of that focus. If we lose that focus we have risk.”

He also shared a valuable tip. Just about every day GTE Financial gets 100 new members. What produces that steady stream?  Best thought about that before he answered.

Here is what he said: “It’s mostly word of mouth. We put a lot of effort into philanthropic giving

We provide $500,000 to $700,000 annually to a lot of non profits in Tampa. We average two financial literacy workshops a day. Word of mouth increases through the right activities. If you are doing the right things, word of mouth happens quickly.”

He continued: “70% of the time new members tell us they really like how we support the community.

They have a good feeling about where they are putting their money when they open an account with us.”

Can you say similar? Do your members?  

 

By Robert McGarvey

A new Oracle report came as a wake-up call for me.  Said Oracle: we are using a lot of travel apps. Quite happily.

At first I snorted at this and then I recognized that, increasingly, I personally am making considerable use of apps – just not travel apps so much.

Should I do a rethink?

I do use Headspace and Mondly (language learning), pretty much daily on my Pixel phone. Google’s Fit is my daily companion as it tracks my walking and meditation. I use SeatJunky often (hunting for free seats at cultural events).  Of course I use Facebook on my phone, also a couple of banking apps and PayPal. The list could go on. But the point is just that, definitely, I make growing use of phone apps.

Five years ago I used pretty much no apps with any regularity but apps have crept into my life.

But not travel apps so much.

The Oracle report tells me to rethink that.  

According to Oracle, “Branded restaurant and hotel apps are very popular; almost a quarter of global consumers have at least one hotel or restaurant app on their mobile devices.” The exact number of consumers who use the travel apps, per Oracle, is 23%.

Those who use them use them often, too. Said Oracle: “Branded restaurant and hotel apps are being used weekly; 70% of the hotel/ restaurant branded app users say they use those apps at least once a week.”

For point of comparison, we use mobile banking apps more – but travel apps are surprising strong.  Here is data from a Federal Reserve study: “The Fed survey found that 43 percent of all mobile phone users with bank accounts had used mobile banking in the previous 12 months, up from 22 percent in the agency’s 2011 survey. Among mobile banking users with smartphones (cell phones with internet connectivity), 53 percent with bank accounts used mobile banking in the previous 12 months.”

As far as travel apps go, once we use one, we seem open to using more.  Oracle added: “Once consumers engage with branded apps, they’re open to using several; two thirds of the consumers using hotel or restaurant apps have at least three of them on their devices.”

A last bit from Oracle: “Branded apps are more popular than third party ordering apps – only 20% of global consumers have an app for a third party aggregator.”

It’s the last in fact that surprises me. I do have, and have used, HotelTonight, OpenTable, HipMunk, and a few others.

As for branded apps, I have on my phone Uber (used a lot), United, American Airlines, Delta, My TSA, and, nope, not a single hotel branded app.  I also have no restaurant apps. And I’ve never used the airline apps.

Maybe it’s my age.  Said Oracle: “Only 9% of consumers aged 55+ have a restaurant or hotel app on their mobiles, compared to 31% of millennials.”

I’m in sync with this however: “20% of global consumers have at least one app for a food delivery service on their devices.”  In my case it’s Ubereats, also Amazon Prime Now (which I have used on several occasions). Which puts me in line with this Oracle finding: “28% of global consumers said that they have paid for food and drink from an app on their mobile devices at least once.”

It worked fine for me, by the way.  I just don’t order much takeout food and so haven’t had a need for the apps anyway.

You are sitting out hospitality apps? Oracle said a lot of us do.  “43% of global consumers say that they do not use hospitality apps.” This also is age influenced.  “70% of the 55+ generation do not use apps in any way, compared to just 26% of millennials,” according to Oracle.

Tell you the truth, however, I am now downloading more travel apps and will begin using them because I am getting very accustomed to using apps (like Headspace) every day.

That’s the reality of mobile: the more we use it, the more we use it and, suddenly, we see the convenience of having what amounts to a mini computer in our pocket.

Then too, the power and ease of use of all mobile apps is much higher than it was when the iPhone launched 11 years ago (or the apps we had on our Palm Pilots before then).  

My advice: download three or four travel apps and, probably, you’ll begin to find utility and, no, I’m still not downloading any hotel apps – and year ago research from business intelligence firm L2 dismissed the lot as junk.  As for airlines, here’s a roundup of the best.  And here’s PCMag’s roundup of the best in all categories.

Happy downloading.