credit union

From the future of branches (maybe brighter than you fear) to the profound impacts Covid-19 may have on your credit union, this conversation with longtime banking analyst Bob Meara, now a senior analyst with consulting firm Celent, will get you thinking.

For starters, accept that very probably Covid-19 will work lasting changes on how your credit union does business – and very probably there will be growing acceptance of digital tools that will last beyond the pandemic.

Face to face as a primary interaction will lessen as a result of the virus, he said.

But Meara also is something of a branch optimist, especially regarding credit unions.  Some mega banks are unquestionably over branched, he admits, but few credit unions are.  What he sees is that many credit unions need to make progress in deploying branches more effectively as tools for relationship building.

Members don’t need branches for transactions.

But many still want them for relationships, advice, help.

Along the way, Meara tells why video tellers have been something of a failure, and also why digital only banks mainly have sputtered.

But he also talks about where credit unions need to play catch up – think digital transformation and, especially, digital account origination (opening a new account needn’t necessitate a branch visit!).

Hear the Meara podcast 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.comFind out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

Bob Fisher, recently retired longtime CEO of $2.8 billion Grow Credit Union in Tampa, opens this podcast by relating a call he had a few weeks ago with the present CEO.  Bob said he told him, “I’m calling you with glee. I am so glad I am not in your chair now” and that’s because of coronavirus, the global recession, and the upheaval that has remade the world.

And yet you can hear this in Fisher’s voice: he truly believes smart credit union CEOs will see opportunities, even amid this chaos, they will seize it and their institutions will prosper.

“CEOs need to be dreamers,” said Fisher. Think big. Think how you can do it better. Think how you can invent the next way to bank before the others see it.

That’s success.

Fisher’s philosophy is plain: basically you grow or you die.  When he took over Grow it was in NCUA’s doghouse and it had around $240 million in assets.

Now it is a star even in the competitive Florida environment.

You will hear how he did that in this podcast and you will also hear why he views NCUA as a credit union’s friend.

You’ll also hear why you cannot build a credit union around Baby Boomers, not one that will thrive.

There is a long, provocative discussion about the board and governance and how management needs to work with its board.

Want to know how to make indirect lending work? Listen to this podcast. Fisher tells how.

He also explains the institution’s expansion into South Carolina (go Clemson!).

There’s a lot to unpack in this podcast and it’s all inspiring.

You will hear mention of prior CU2.0 Podcast guests – Bucky Sebastian, longtime BECU CEO Gary Oakland, and SECU CEO Jim Blaine.  Listen to the quartet and get an education from four of the industry’s best leaders in the past quarter century.

Hear the Fisher podcast 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

You have never heard a CU2.0 Podcast like this one.  This is a podcast where sacred cows are roasted on an open spit, criticisms are hurled at regulators, huge questions are raised about the wisdom of credit unions emulating bankers, and then there is the giant question about the industry’s future.

Welcome to the CU2.0 Podcast. This is your host, Robert McGarvey.  Today’s guest, Bill Brooks, presently serving as a credit union doctor who is helping to save an institution in Maryland.  Earlier he worked as an NCUA examiner.

Brooks knows where the bodies are buried and here he draws us a map.

He also talks abut the why of the 2008-2010 mortgage meltdown, the looming meltdown in car loans, and why many credit unions have betrayed their core mission of focusing on members of modest means.

Double whew.

Hear the Brooks podcast here.

In this podcast there are references to multiple guests on earlier podcasts including Jim Blaine, Bucky Sebastian, Maine Harvest, Bill Bynum, and Cliff Rosenthal. 

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

Shane Butcher is a security guru at CUSO Ongoing Operations and lately has been busy helping numerous credit unions safely transition their employees to working from home.

The good news: credit unions that approach this methodically, carefully will probably be able to mitigate risks.

The bad news: credit unions that rush into this, haphazardly, with inadequate employee training may not.

One key: stress to employees working from home that they need to practice the very same security awareness as they do in the office. No shortcuts.

Butcher also warned that very probably cyber criminals are preparing to attempt to feast on remote credit union workers.  The risks are real.

Note, too, that Butcher’s OGO experience entails working with credit unions with assets under $100 million to ones with substantially over $1 billion. It’s a diverse customer mix but that gives him perspective on what is realistic, what is needed, what can happen.

“A lot of our customers are asking for help getting their remote workers online.”

His three word cure for a lot of today’s credit union security worries: training, training, training.

Butcher has significant concerns about BYOD access to the institution’s network – listen up find out why. But it starts with this: “we don’t know what’s on home devices” and that can range from malware to spyware to worse.

Hear the companion podcast on credit union remote workers with Kevin Langford of Georgetown Kraft Credit Union in South Carolina here.

Hear the Butcher podcast 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

Do what you do best and let us do the rest.

That’s the one sentence pitch for Exclamation Services, a Wisconsin CUSO that sees its mission as helping smaller credit unions – under $500 million in assets – thrive.

Every year hundreds of credit unions, mainly small, vanish – typically in mergers.

But what if those credit unions could hire a la carte services such as marketing, HR, IT, and back office – and in fact get higher quality workforces, at lower cost, because these are shared services via Exclamation.

Remember that: Exclamation is offering an alternative pathway to merger. A path that will let smaller credit unions survive.

Alan Bergstrom is CEO of Exclamation and, he said, Exclamation presently serves around a dozen credit unions, including one as small as $28 million and some as large as $500 million.

Geographic reach is mainly Wisconsin but the plan is to go broader because the Exclamation services adapt well to remote delivery.

This is an exciting option that just may help thousands of credit unions survive.  Sharing is baked into credit union DNA and this is real sharing.

Hear the Exclamation podcast here.

Mentioned in this show is CUNA’s “Open Your Eyes” campaign.  Listen to our podcast with Teresa Freeborn on that effort.

Also mentioned is a Ron Shevlin podcast where he said that community banks are making a new push into retail banking – hear the details here.  

Suddenly credit unions across the nation are ordering employees home, as part of the response to the coronavirus pandemic.  And that is triggering a tidal wave of worries about the possible cyber insecurities that will result as newly empowered employees log into the credit union networks.

Hitherto, at many credit unions, the workers who had home access to the network were mainly senior, experienced, and both well trained and well equipped.

Today’s newly drafted home workers often lack the right equipment and their training may have been brisk.

Global cyber criminals are said to be eyeing these workers the way a hungry lioness eyes a slow wildebeest in the Serengeti.

 That’s why you want to hear from Kevin Langford, chief information officer at $140 million Georgetown Kraft Credit Union in South Carolina.

Langford has trained many workers in the secrets of safe cyber work at home and here he tells what every credit union needs to be doing.

This topic is so big that next week we will post another podcast on the same theme with Shane Butcher, senior solutions and security architect at CUSO Ongoing Operations. 

You need to listen to both.  The risks are extraordinary today and here are solid suggestions for navigating turbulence securely.

The UPS scam info is here.

The dropped USB drive info is here.

Listen to this podcast 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

Who will win: community banks or credit unions?

War on.

A keen observer is Ron Shevlin, diretor of research at Cornerstone Advisors and author of a new report, What’s Going on in Banking 2020.  It’s a data rich report. Download it, read it.

Shevlin was an early guest on the CU2.0 Podcast – Episode 21 – and he’s back in this wide ranging conversation about credit unions, technology, and ways to win.

For instance: can community banks regain a hold on retail banking, a niche they ceded to credit unions some years ago?

Can credit unions succeed at taking business banking from community banks?

A growing trend, per Shevlin, is that consumers have multiple checking account relationships that they seek to optimize – and a key is how easy it is to quickly move money around today.  What does your institution know about this?

A credit union failing is a persistent belief that “our success is our people,” said Shevlin.

Millennials are more focused on technology.

“It is not about people, it’s about meeting members’ needs,” said Shevlin.

He also gives a formula for succeeding in financial services today. It comes near the end of the podcast. Listen up.

There’s a reference to Bill Bynum, CEO of Hope Credit Union. Hear his podcast here.

Listen to the Shevlin 2 podcast 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

Does your credit union have a future?

There’s the blunt question.

Welcome to the CU2.0 Podcast with your host Robert McGarvey. Today’s guest Jon Ogden, head of strategic content at digital firm MX which has recently released two provocative reports, The Ultimate Guide to the Future of Banking and the Ultimate Guide to Digital Transformation.

Read them, they are free.

But know they may keep you up at night.

That’s because many, many institutions – thousands of credit union among them – just don’t get it. They cling to an analog, physical world where consumers – most of them and more daily – crave better digital experiences.

The MX reports – filled with consumer research – prove this.  Today 86% of us say our primary contacts with our FI are mobile and online. Just 14% say it’s via branch or ATM.

59% of us say we would take a loan from a tech company.

49% of us predict “far fewer branches.”

This is a fast ride through lots of numbers but the bracing take away from the numbers is that now is the time to transform – or perish.

In this podcast Ogden talks about work MX has done for credit union giant BECU.  Hear our podcast with retired CEO Gary Oakland.

Know that some of the opinions in the reports come from banking futurist Chris Skinner.  Hear our podcast with Skinner.

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

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

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