My first resolution for 2022 is that I am now telling clients that I am available for travel this year.

I was unavailable in 2021 and much of 2020.

This a.m. I even changed the airline designated with Amex Plat for the $200 fee credit (to Delta for those keeping score). I had not collected a penny of the credit in 2021 but I am optimistic I will in 2022 so I spent the few minutes calling Amex.

And, yes, another resolution is to travel healthy and smart. I am not joining the ranks of the maskless fools or the inflight mask rebels, indeed I will probably doubledown on sanitation and mask wearing. Yes, I plan to travel but I also plan to do what I can to stay well.

Part of that is accepting that Covid is not going away, not soon. Nonetheless I plan to travel. But not stupidly.

So I am switching from cloth masks to high tech Korean masks (KF95 and KF94), to seek to stay healthy in Maricopa County where Covid cases are rocketing higher and yet the maskless multiply. I can’t change their behavior but I can toughen up my own borders. Of course I will wear similar inflight.

Another resolution – maybe just an acknowledgement – is that the value of tracking online Covid case counters has plummeted as more of us test at home and if you test positive do you really call it in and to whom and is it recorded? Experts warn that the present counts are desperately deflated and so I am no longer basing decisions regarding safety of destinations on these numbers.

But I am checking hospital ICU capacity. Obviously, not all ICU beds are occupied by Covid patients but a reasonable guess is that cities where ICU capacity is at bursting are experiencing Covid outbreaks.

Also useful are counters for percentage of a state that is vaccinated. Pick a number you are comfortable with and don’t go to states with lower counts (Idaho brings up the rear).

Here’s an international vaccination rate tracker.

A last chart to eyeball ranks states by the percentage that is boosted and, yeah, the numbers are inexplicably, sadly low but the stats provide some guidance about where to go and where to avoid (New Hampshire and Hawaii, looking at you).

Even so, I plan to rely on my own instincts about a room when judging whether to go in or not and to stay or not. The macro numbers are useful but decisions about safety are, in my mind, very local.

Here’s the money question: Will I do long-haul travel? That’s maybe the question of the year because, from what I am seeing, it appears that many – indeed most – of us are ready for short-haul travel, often via car, and that makes sense because that is an environment we can control.

Put us in a large public conveyance (aka airplane) and we have much less – bordering on no – control and there also are the anti mask crazies, the violent nutters, and the rest we want to avoid.

But I will tell you I am deep into planning a trip to Europe in Q3 and that will involve many hours of flying. But I did a similar itinerary in Q3 2021, used commonsense and social distancing to the extent possible, and left after three weeks with a negative Covid test at Madrid Airport. I never felt real risk on the trip, except on the last day when waiting for a final flight to Phoenix at an overcrowded LAX. The European portion of my travels was delightful.

Spain does require arriving Americans to be vaccinated – and very likely soon will also require proof of a booster. Portugal does not require a vaccination but does require a recent negative test. I am planning to go to both.

What I am saying is that I am creating my own new normal. I believe we now are entering a period of learning to live with and around Covid. As more of us get vaccinated and boosted and probably boosted again, infection rates will continue to drop as will hospitalizations.

If we take our own health seriously I believe we can safely navigate the travel terrain that lies in front of us and, frankly, I am ready to go.

by Robert McGarvey

Crypto is now, it is happening.

Happy New Year!

Our first show in 2022 is about a topic that you will likely will be hearing a lot about this year: Crypto currencies. And what you may not realize is that with crypto in play the financial institution stranglehold on wire transfers may slip. Even worse, credit card interchange may vanish.

Now do we have your attention?

Crypto brings risks but also possible rewards for smart players.

On today’s show is Larry Pruss, crypto lead at consulting firm SRM (Strategic Resource Management). and, says Pruss, crypto is streaming at you at full speed

Proof is that NCUA in December offered guidance about how credit unions should interact with crypto vendors.

Maybe the biggest risk to credit unions is that evidence mounts that many members will leave a financial institution that doesn’t offer crypto related services for one that does.  At the very least they will move money out of your credit union into an institution that trades in crypto.

We may well be at a perilous moment for traditional FIs as DeFi (decentralized finance) moves onto center stage.

How to get involved in crypto with minimal risk? Pruss offers suggestions in the podcast and, from my perspective, the easiest way to stick a toe into these digital waters is by offering crypto rewards.  More institutions – Venmo for instance – already are on this but there remains running room for credit unions that want to play.

And Pruss has other suggestions.

This is a fast paced podcast. Inside 40 minutes you will hear what you need to know to play in crypto. Smartly.

Listen up.

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

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

by Robert McGarvey

 Walt Agius knows credit union lending.  And he especially knows what credit unions need to to stay competitive in the 21st century.

Consider this podcast a deep dive into today’s lending.

The guest is Walt Agius, CEO of Lendsys, a fintech, and also CU Lending Edge, a CUSO that today focuses on car loans but, says Agius, he is looking to extend the portfolio. 

In the past he was CEO of CU Sol, a CUSO, and also CEO of California Bear Credit Union.

He really knows lending, especially car loans.  

In this podcast Agius offers tips about how to make indirect auto lending work for the credit union (and, yes, he knows many credit unions have grumbles about indirect lending).

He also throws out the idea that every credit union should be looking hard at syndicating every loan that comes in the door.  That strategy dramatically limits risk.  He said he would want to keep perhaps 10% of most loans but he would want to sell the other 90% of other participants – and this collaborative way is a particularly credit union mindset.  

Listen up.

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

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

By Robert McGarvey

Every year, around this time, I have spent a few minutes mulling my travel plans for the new year ahead and, occasionally, doing a mileage run to grab a better elite status and almost always planning at least one trip for fun.

This year is different. Mainly because it borders on the impossible to forecast what my travel year will look like.  If forced to guess I’d say pretty similar to 2021 which featured exactly one trip (to Spain in early fall; in 2022 I plan a trip to Portugal and Spain, from Porto to San Sebastian).

What about business travel?

Yeah, what about it?

I am looking at a report from polling firm Morning Consult on “The State of Travel and Hospitality – Q4 2021 Report” (free download here) that serves up immense gloom regarding business travel.

Just about all travel in fact.

Perhaps we are at a crossroad where – fueled by environmental concerns and triggered by the immediacy of Covid – our relationship to travel is undergoing immense change.

Keep in mind that the phenomenon of mass longhaul travel is recent – the first commercial trans Pacific flight was 1936 (Pan Am).  It wasn’t until the late 1950s that commercial jet travel took root and deep into the 1960s when it became commonplace.  Meaning we have maybe 50+ years of mass longhaul travel and that’s a speck in the history of human existence.

Don’t think we cannot turn off that desire.  It’s happening.  The Morning Consult numbers suggest as much.

One in three of us say it will be more than a year (12% say never) that they will travel for leisure.

Holding back an energetic return to leisure travel, per Morning Consult, is confusion and concern about Covid-related travel concerns and requirements.  When do I need a Covid test, what kind, by when? Do I need to carry my vaccination card? Can I get into country X at all?  Does the US State Dept. say it’s safe? Can I travel back home?

If you are not at least slightly frazzled by all this you are not paying attention.  It’s a world of numerous and shifting rules, requirements, and restrictions.  

Air rage is also keeping some of us on the ground – more of us than I would have thought. Per Morning Consult, 41% of us have traveled less because of concerns about the behavior of other passengers.

63% of us are at least slightly concerned about an air rage incident on their next flight.  Only 36% are not at all concerned which, I guess, is where I fall.  

63% of us also support a vaccine mandate for air travel (and 81% support it for international travel).  These numbers tell me that the anti vaxxers may be loud but their numbers aren’t so high as to matter when setting policies.  I urge the Biden Administration to listen to the people and to issue an Executive Order that mandates vaccines for air travel. That will help get more us in the air, more often.

As for business travel, the forecast is gloomy – and it is especially gloomy coming from people who had traveled for business at least three times a year. 39% of that group in the US now say they will never travel for business again.

Never.

48% of Germans say likewise. 62% of French.  39% of Canadians.  

Of the business trips that do occur, one in five will be day trips, says Morning Consult.  And 55% will make business trips by car. 15% will travel by bus. 16% by train.

Only 50% say they expect some trips to involve a plane.

Another shoe dropping – not reflected in the Morning Consult data – is that sustainability concerns may further deflate travel, especially long haul jet travel.  Accenture data say that 66% of us are “ramping up” their sustainable/ethical purchasing.  Wall Street and thus the C suite also are climbing aboard the sustainability wagon.  

That bodes poorly for jet travel.

Back at Morning Consult, it’s forecast is pure gloom: Business travel will never return to prepandemic levels. 

I agree.  And the dramatic word is “never.”

We definitely don’t know what the new normal will be regarding business travel. But it will be different. Lots different. We know that much.

By Robert McGarvey

 BNPL.  Remember that because you soon will be using that abbreviation often.

It stands for Buy Now, Pay Later and it is just about the hottest trend in payments at retail.

Today’s US market is small, maybe $50 billion but forecasts show the BNPL market crashing into the many hundreds of billions of dollars by the middle of the present decade.  And then the numbers start to get dizzily huge.

Why so much interest?  Oldtimers will recall that BNPL was a staple of 1950s retail but as credit cards proliferated it receded into the background.  But now it is again hot and that’s because it speaks to the purchasing needs and desires of Gen Z and young Millennials.  Why don’t they just slap down a Visa card and put it on credit? The advantage of BNPL to them is that they know the total cost of purchase when they make it.  The full payments amount, spread out over an agreed upon number of months, is there to see.

Pay the minimum on a credit card purchase and suddenly the total amount paid can vault much, much higher.

So the younger generations are hopping aboard BNPL which, right now, is largely used for consumer purchases of a few hundred dollars to maybe a few thousand.

Right now it’s mainly fintechs that are playing hard in this space.

But Scottsdale AZ based equipifi is a fintech that wants to enable credit unions in particular along with some banks to play in this space.

In this podcast with co-founder and CEO Bryce Deeney you will hear about equipifi’s secret sauce which is software that can approve and fund a BNPL loan at retail in under a minute.

No application is required. No FICO score is checked.

The basis for the loan is knowledge of the history of the member’s checking (sharedraft) account and insight into how much surplus money generally is in the account.  So that’s a solid basis for forecasting that this consumer can in fact handle this monthly payment.

In the podcast Deeney tells in detail exactly how equipifi works along with how it is integrated into the core.

Any credit union that wants more members under, say, thirty years of age needs to listen and take notes.  

Keep listening and you will hear the equipifi has plans to roll out a BNPL service for SMBs too.  How cool is that?

Listen up.

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

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

by Robert McGarvey

We know boo about Omicron – not how deadly it is, not how effective our vaccines are in warding it off, not how widespread it already is in the United States and globally. But there is one thing we do know: lots of new travel restrictions are coming, lots of travel gateways are erecting tall barriers to entry, and lots of meetings and events – which had been edging into in-person events – will be reverting to virtual.

Wishful thinking may want to deny everything in that last sentence but wishful thinking isn’t reality. We saw the reaction to delta earlier this year and we will see a rerun now, maybe with even more restrictions, especially if Omicron jumps the vaccine-booster barriers.

Know this: I am planning a trip to Portugal and Spain in this coming fall. I am reasonably confident it will happen in 10 months. But I am also very confident – indeed more confident – that the next three to six months are going to be full of chaos because of Omicron and the new variants that are likely soon to follow.

Just assume meetings and events that had been scheduled for the next three months will be virtual. It is hard to see many organizations encouraging employees to travel to in-person events and they won’t.

That’s just the beginning of the changes. Now New Year’s Eve celebrations have been canceled in the Algarve, The UK is requiring everyone to show a Covid test on arrival – that includes us, the Irish, the fully vaccinated. In the Netherlands, facemasks are now required in lots of places, from hairdressers to restaurants and bars and of course public transit. In Germany vaccinations are about to become compulsory, despite a vocal anti vax minority. In Spain support is growing for requiring a digital vaccination certificate to gain entry to many public places such as restaurants.

That last is a good idea, by the way. In the US we should require proof of full vaccination status (and very soon boosters too) to gain entry to restaurants, supermarkets, and, yes, airports. So far the political will to do this via Executive Order is lacking in the White House but that may change if the pressures grow on hospital capacity and deaths begin to mount again. Both seem very possible – hospitals already are strained in much of the country – including Vermont which once had been a poster child for doing the right things regarding Covid.

Of course the Biden Administration already has imposed a new 24 hour rule for tests required of all incoming international travelers including US citizens who are fully vaccinated. Many say that is sharply reducing the readiness of US citizens to travel abroad and probably that is true. In reality the requirement may not be that huge a hurdle. When returning from Spain in October I had to produce a test result that was no more than 72 hours old upon takeoff and that was no big deal. Madrid Airport has a very good testing facility – my test was around 100 Euros – and I think mine was within 26 hours of takeoff. I could easily tweak my timing and do it inside 24 hours – and, word of advice, definitely book an appointment in advance and pre-pay. At least in Madrid there was a long line of those who showed up without appointments and tests are administered to that group on an as available basis. Those with appointments were ushered in.

When will this end? Nobody knows, obviously.

But a guess is that we need to get the world up to maybe 75% vaccinated. Best guesses are that it will take at least five more months to get the global fully vaccinated near there.

For something like normalcy to return we also need wide distribution of booster shots. Maybe 10% of us in the US have had a booster. That number needs to ramp up much higher, soon.

We also need to return to cautious conduct – mask wearing, crowd avoidance, etc. Stop whining, it’s keeping us safer.

You thought all this was behind us? Who didn’t? But here we are again and I am not expecting much improvements for many months to come. Improvement will come, when we have taken the steps needed to get there. Until then it will be one step forward, two back. So keep your travel bags unpacked. I know I am.

By Robert McGarvey 1

You probably know names like Flippa, FE International, Dealasite, and Sedo — they’re marketplaces where owners of online businesses list them for sale. With a few clicks you can buy an online business. It’s that easy!

Continued at StartUpSavant

Read about success stories, the downside risks, and how much it costs to play in this emerging marketplace.

by Robert McGarvey

Maybe it is a cockamamie pie in the sky of a dreamer’s idea.

Or maybe it is a key to showing the future relevance and importance of credit unions.

Focus on the target: solidifying the credit union reputation as the welcoming place for the presently unbanked – about 6% of us – and the underbanked, another 19% of us.  That is one in four Americans who are ignored, wholly or in part, by traditional financial institutions.

USAlliance, a $2 billion credit union that has grown out of the legacy IBM employees credit union, wants to change that. And the vehicle is Bank Dora, a branchless neo-bank powered by an app (find it in Google Play and the Apple App Store). Or sign up here.

Continued at CUInsight

By Robert McGarvey

It is tiresome – so many press releases and executive interviews spewed out by airlines and big hotel chains prognosticating that business travel will return to 2019 “normality” in 2022, probably by mid year.

These predictions are to fact based estimates as manure is to meatballs.

And I really like a good Italian American meatball (with the trinity of meats, please).

But I am no fan of fake news releases and Panglossian interviews.

Or fact free forecasts by business travel fanboys. You know who they are. Because they like travel they fervently believe everybody does. But it ain’t so.

Interlude: this blog has no comments on omicron because I have nothing useful to say other than the sooner the world gets vaccinated, the better.

Back to the present musings:

Now Google has weighed in and where data is concerned, Google is the motherlode.

That has always been the company’s business plan.  Hoover up every scrap of data, sort it, and draw fact based conclusions.  Google knows you are interested in travel to the Maldives over Christmas because you searched for exactly that 10 times this week. When Google talks it has data to back it up.

Here is Google’s prediction: Per Travel Weekly UK, “The decline in the volume of business travellers may continue beyond the pandemic, Google’s latest travel data suggests.”

Google’s Meg Elzea, global travel industry manager, added that while a majority of business travelers will be back on the road in 2022, companies and travelers are in fact “making changes.”  

Like what?  Per Travel Weekly, “She told Abta’s Travel Trends conference that Google expects business travel to return in the next year to ‘70% of pre-pandemic levels’.”

That sounds exactly on target to me.

Roughly one-third of pre-pandemic travel is not coming back and it isn’t because we have concluded t isn’t necessary and companies have decided they can save that money.

Even some air execs agree. For instance, Loganair boss Jonathan Hinkles speaking at the Airlines 2021 Conference,, said: “We are looking at a much lower level of business travel. The market will be smaller overall.  

He elaborated: “We’ve all moved on to Zoom or Teams and a proportion of that is going to stick.”

“He acknowledged that a certain amount of business will still have to be done in person, but maintained that ‘a proportion of the services sector is not going to revert back to the [business travel] ethos it had.’”

Personally, while I think the virtual meeting technology – Zoom and similar video calling tools – will erase some meetings, I think bigger factors are in play.

For me, at least, Zoom seems to be replacing oldfashioned phone calls and, frankly, I prefer the latter and often stick with a phone without video.  Why comb one’s hair when one has no need? But that is what Zoom is replacing: phone calls.

As for what is driving the reduction in meetings, I agree with Google’s research that pinpoints three triggers:  the global outcry over climate issues – and air travel is a prime offender, an employee search for better work life balance, and a corporate bean counter hunt for cost savings.

That’s a perfect storm that, I believe, will sideline just about that 30% of travel Google sees getting trimmed.

Many employees will be happier (substantial business travel is a factor in ill health as well as significant family issues in many households).  The CFOs (and Wall Street profit counters) will be overjoyed. And the planet will be in better shape if we cut back on travel.

What trips are not on the chopping block?  I see sales calls and customer service calls returning to normal when the present health issues vanish and a lot of the complicated and ever changing travel requirements (such as PCR tests) are simplified, or at the least regularized.  A world of fast changing rules is a world where we stay home.

But the day travel gets simplified will come, possibly in mid to late 2022.

What travel will be eliminated?

The kinds of trips that will be sidelined are the intramural, getting to know you get together, small meetings (often in Chicago or Dallas for big national companies).  

Oh, do I remember them,some from as far back as 1976 and were they tedious and pointless!  They doubtless still are.  Erase them from the calendar and nobody will cry.

The organization can also put out press releases – true ones – about decreased carbon load. And there can be whispers to Wall Street and investors about profit gains.  

Nope, that one-third of travel will be forever lost. And no one will much miss it.

by Robert McGarvey

First comes golf, lots of it. Good Scotch. Some travel. Lots of TV … and then what? 

The surprising answer is that for many retirees, their answer is to work. Maybe more surprisingly still, lots of them turn to self-employment and that means a startup. That’s proven by numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which show that the fastest growing age cohort in the workforce is 75 and older, and self-employment is chosen by more who are 65+ than by any other age cohort.

Around one in every six of those who are 65+ are self-employed. The next highest group, by the way, are those 55-64 where 9% are self-employed, per BLS.

Why? The reasons are as varied as are seniors, but a fact that comes through loud and clear is that the US is at the very beginning of a silver tsunami where retired seniors declare “not me,” and work again. Some do it for the money while others do it for fun. Still, others seek to solve a need they are passionate to address.

Here are there stories.

Continued at Startup Savant