credit union

by Robert McGarvey

How many of your members do most of their banking via a mobile app?

How many should?

Milestones to remember before answering:

• iPhone introduced June 2007
• SMS banking via phone debuted in Europe 1999
• Mobile banking smartphone apps take off in 2010

We are 20 years into the banking by mobile revolution and 10 years into the banking by smart app revolution so tell me this: why do roughly half of us not use a mobile banking app, according to a 2018 Harland Clarke report.

About half plain never use the thing.  Never.

Continued at CUInsight

“We are facing a global talent shortage,” said Tommy Marshall, executive director of the new Georgia Fintech Academy, by way of an an answer to the question: why was your organization formed.

It’s an ambitious undertaking. The idea is to pull together resources from 26 Georgia public universities – including Georgia Tech, Georgia State, and Georgia Southern – and to offer students the opportunity to earn a degree focused on fintech.

Right now, the emphasis is on a bachelors degree program but there are plans for an advanced degree as well as professional development courses.

Understand this: Georgia has gotten a jump on other states. Nowhere else is there such a sweeping program that draws upon a wide range of institutions, all joining together to produce grads with degrees that will help them get good, well paying, interesting work.

Marshall of course is looking for companies that want to hire grads – FIS is already a primary program sponsor – and he specifically saus in this podcast that he wants to hear from credit unions. If you have needs for fintech grads and you are in Georgia, shout it out because this might become an answered prayer.

In the program, Marshall tells exactly why Georgia started the Academy, how he got his job, and why this all just may be very important to economic development in Georgia.

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

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

Listen here

What are people saying about your credit union?

That means members, staff, and community members?

And how does a nasty hack impact your reputation?

Meet Casy Boggs of ReputationUS, where the business is in fact reputation management and a primary emphasis is work with credit unions.

You think you have a great reputation? Don’t guess. Know. Get a reputation audit done and be prepared to be surprised by the results.

Particularly interesting is how a hack impacts a credit union’s reputation, a topic Boggs has studied in depth.

Among his findings: 48% of us are very unlikely to remain a member if their data has been hacked and then used to set up a bogus credit card account.

Good news, per the survey, is the vast majority of us hold credit unions in high reputational esteem.

But don’t take it for granted.

Boggs says in this podcast that too many institutions are unprepared to deal with events that involve a reputational hit – they lack a plan and a plan can smooth the path to recovery.

Bad stuff happens. Are you prepared?

Find out what’s involved in this podcast. Listen here.

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

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

Teach them when they are young.

That’s the approach to financial education taken by John Lanza of the Money Mammals, where the focus is on financial education for children 11 and under.

A key: the education becomes a family project.  That means credit unions – and credit unions can sign up with the Money Mammals to access its library of teaching materials and workbooks – will be attracting younger adults with small children.

The material also is branded with the credit union name.

And the financial education itself of course is a key credit union mission.

Lanza stresses that good as it is for kids to get financial education in school, it’s crucial that they also get it at home because they need some money to learn with. Call it allowance and know it can be small.  But that money becomes a teaching tool.

Lanza said he presently is working with 15 credit unions and he wants more.  Some are under $200 million, one is bigger than $3 billion.  So the program will work in just about any size institution.

Give a listen and just maybe you will be persuaded to focus on financial ed and children, the Money Mammals way.

Listen here.

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

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

Biophilic.

That’s your word for today and it is complements of Jesse Boyer, COO of the $600 million NIH Federal Credit Union in Maryland which is moving at a high speed to open a new branch in Silver Spring that is biophilic in design – meaning it puts you in touch with nature and, in this case, there’s a living moss wall.

Of course you want to hear more about this. 

What this podcast is about is a search for a new, more welcoming branch format and, at the new NIH FCU location, ITMs – interactive teller machines – replace ATMs and oldfashioned tellers.

The idea is to produce a comfortable setting that is both warm and techie.

Some balancing act but the NIH FCU folks think they have the roadmap and in this podcast you will hear about it.

You will also hear candid musing about what a $600 million credit union has to do to insure longterm survival.  Think acquisitions.

This podcast revolves around extremely candid and frank assessments of what needs to be done – in terms of branch reinvention and credit union survival.

Listen to the NIH FCU podcast here.

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

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 you want to talk about money – or would you prefer to talk about sex?

Many of us today would choose the sex conversation, mainly because we know we don’t know much about personal finance and we also know we don’t anybody to ask for advice.

Enter Tropical Financial in Florida which has introduced a new website Get Beyond Money where the purpose is to provide people (target audience: older millennials) with the financial education they need and want so that they can make smarter, shrewder financial decisions.

The website has plenty of blogs, quizzes, and even offers a free appointment with a financial counselor.

This podcast offers an insider’s view of how this campaign was created – and know it was three years in the making. There were stumbles along the way but that enriches this story.

Also know that Tropical Financial is willing to share its content with non competitive credit unions. Don’t be shy about asking.

Today’s guest is Amy McGraw, the first repeat podcast guest. Last year she starred in episode 10 on the student loan crisis and what Tropical Financial is doing to help.

Now she’s leading the charge in bringing meaningful financial education to older millennials who – in many cases – really don’t know who to ask for advice.  Tropical Financial wants to step into that role.

Listen here

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

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

Credit unions are buying so many banks the Wall Street Journal refers to this as a “spree.”

Just in the first eight months of 2018 there were 21 transactions, compared to 12 in the prior five years, by the WSJ count.

What is going on here?

We put that question to John Weinkowitz, Head of Product Strategy, Community

Markets, Finastra, and himself an m and a expert.

Is this doing business with the devil?

Should this put into jeopardy the credit union tax exemption – as many bankers are insisting?

What drives the transactions? The need to grow, said Weinkowitz. FIs below a certain size find it more difficult to compete. So some put themselves up for sale.  And others go hunting for acquisition partners.

The allure for credit union execs is an immediate increase in members, deposits, and also – in many cases – branches.

But are they factoring in predictable attrition?

Do they have a strategy for employee retention – which may be critical to making an acquisition work?

Before buying a community bank listen to this podcast. You don’t want to ignore that advice.

The podcast is here.

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

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

Carla Bienz is CEO of Partners 1st Credit Union in Fort Wayne IN – an institution where she has worked since she graduated from college and where she now is CEO.  And she has keen insights into the plight of smaller credit unions and what they need to do to survive and prosper.

Listen here

https://www.buzzsprout.com/268738/1934348-cu-2-0-podcast-episode-64-carla-bienz-partners-1st-cu-live-from-finastra-community-markets

There was a time when community financial institutions owned the home mortgage market. No more.  Fintechs dominate and mega banks aren’t far behind. Most credit unions are left to squabble over crumbs.

But just maybe there’s hope. At Finastra, Steve Hoke, Vice President, Product Management, Consumer and SME Lending, says the company’s Fusion Motgagebot Data Insights puts the power of data analytics in the hands of a community financial institution and the upshot is just maybe it can compete – successfully – against the fintechs and mega banks when it has data at its command.

Listen here

What percentage of your mortgages actually close? How does that compare with competitors? Don’t guess. Know. That’s the promise of this data.

Understand, the data is anonymized.  You cannot ask it to tell you how you fare against a specific competitor. But if you want to see how you do against others, it has the answer.

This is powerful stuff.  Hoke said Finastra is adding capabilities and hopes to extend it to more types of lending (auto loans for instance).

“We are giving community institutions insight into data that before they were flying blind about,” said Hoke.

This is one of a half dozen podcasts recorded at Finastra Community Markets in Chicago, October 2019.

What would it be like to go from being Head, Digital Customer Experience at Lloyds Bank in the United Kingdom – a trillion dollar institution – to being the VP for digital innovation at Colorado-based Canvas Credit Union, with assets around $2.5 billion?

Ask Lucy Donaldson, this week’s guest at the CU 2.0 Podcast. Listen here.

She made exactly that journey and she candidly talks about what a money center bank can do that a credit union usually can’t – but she also talks about the huge advantages a credit union has, from much better agility to strong, genuine community ties.  

She’s seen both sides and she says what she likes about credit unions.

A key point Donaldson makes in this podcast is that it’s time to stop talking about a credit union’s digital transformation – and time to accept that has become its business transformation. A credit union is its bits and bytes and knowing that makes the job of plotting institutional success that much easier.

Here’s a related podcast with Tanan Miles of ENT, Colorado’s biggest credit union.

This is one of a half dozen podcasts recorded at Finastra Community Markets in Chicago, October 2019.

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

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