credit union

 Ask Very Good Security – a San Francisco based fintech – what it does that is different in terms of securing member data and the answer is blunt: what it does is different, better, even very good. To quote from the company’s website about the question that spawned the solution: “Was there a way to secure the data, take it out of scope of liability, and still allow it to be used and exchanged? There was. Their solution became Very Good Security, a new type of data security company with a revolutionary way for companies to secure data.”

Bold idea?

Absolutely.

But face up to reality: data security has been a train wreck for some years. How many times have your credit card numbers, even SSN, been stolen by hackers in the last decade?

There has to be a better way.

Very Good Security believes it has that way and Elan Mevasse, the company’s credit union lead, is on the podcast to tell what the company does and how it does it.

There’s some technical speak in this show – “tokenization” and suchlike – but on the whole this is a PG rated episode that will be accessible to all.

Listen to the end too. There’s a minute or two devoted to how Very Good Security helped Ukraine based engineers and their families relocate to safer ground as Russia invaded the country.

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

 It’s called Array for good reason.  That’s because this fintech offers an arsenal — ok, an array – of credit score tools such as a a credit score, a credit score simulator (what happens if you pay off that mortgage?), three bureau credit scores (they do differ), dark web monitoring and more.

Credit unions that sign up for the Array services can pick and choose what tools they want to offer.

Isn’t it simpler – and cheaper – just to point members to Credit Karma?

You bet. But why don’t you just tell them to apply for a loan there, too, because Credit Karma makes its money by funneling users into financial products. Products that aren’t yours.

Now do we have your attention?

In this podcast, Laura Trujillo – call her Lo – director of credit union sales at Array – tells why you want to know about Array and why your members will be eager to use the tools.

You want more member visits to your site and your mobile app? You want sticky tools?  Then you probably want credit score tools because many frequently check their credit score, especially if they are dreaming about a new home or rental or maybe a new car and who isn’t these days? Is your credit score high enough to qualify? Don’t guess, know. Use the Array tools at your credit union – and get loan or mortgage there too.

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

 Take a guess: how many of your members earn income from the Gig Economy? 

That can mean anything from an Uber driver, doing DoorDash deliveries, working as a realtor, or creating podcasts.

Guesses run from 25% to over 40% of your members get some money that results in a 1099 form and, therefore, they very much need an easy way to track tax deductible expenses.

Enter Hurdlr, an app that automates expense tracking – including mileage.  That means more Gig workers can deduct more expenses and pay less taxes.  Legally.

Hurdlr’s aim is to take the sweat and heavy lifting our of expense tracking for gig workers, said Raj Bhaskar, CEO of Hurdlr.

By the company’s estimate it has saved users over $300 million in taxes

What does this have to do with your credit union?

Hurdlr is available directly to consumers – there’s even a free version.

But now Hurdlr wants to help credit unions make the app available to their members – and that may help bring in new members who suddenly see that your credit union is actively deploying tools for gig workers.

Sound good?

Listen up to this interview with Bhaskar.

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

 Time travel back 20 years. Imagine going into a credit union or bank and asking for a personal loan for $500.  

Reality: unless you are a very established member/customer you would be shown the door.  Empty handed.  That’s because, in those days, there was no way to profitably make that loan.  

$50,000? Sure.

But $500 for some emergency dental work? Nah.

But now we are in 2022 and, suddenly, fast, inexpensive loan underwriting is a reality as is loan processing. Enter Quilo, a startup co-founded by Don Shafer, well known as a co founder of Kasasa  (click here to hear CU2.0 Podcast #23 on Kasasa).

Quilo’s business is making quick instalment loans to credit union members where the member chooses the payback timetable that works best for him/her.

In most cases, too, the terms are more favorable than buying over time on a credit card.

Loan decisioning also is very fast and loans can be offered on credit as well as debit transactions.

Quilo’s business model is direct to credit unions and community banks. 

The company also plans to help participating credit unions market the availability of Quilo financing to merchants in their community who will be encouraged to make their customers aware of this opportunity.

Sound good? The other guest in this podcast is Joe Arnold, CEO of the $500 million Carter Credit Union in northern Louisiana. Arnold says he wants to offer Quilo to both his members and merchants in his community. He also indicates he believes Quilo will help bring new members into Carter. That means it will help solve two concerns: the need for new members and putting Carter deposits profitably to work.

This is the fourth and last quick podcast from the recent CU2VIP-Live event that brought together perhaps three dozen credit union and fintech leaders. The conversation with Armstrong and Shafer that you hear in this podcast is representative of the kinds of conversations that participants enjoyed over two and one-half days.

Wish you’d been there? Take heart. A follow up event is planned for late summer/early fall. Stay tuned.

And…listen up.

 Build a fintech from the ground up with security in mind – especially and crucially if the fintech wants to work with credit unions.

That is the one sentence takeaway from this 20 minute conversation with Shane Butcher, director of CISO Services of CUSO Ongoing Operations (and a past CU2.0 Podcast guest, episode 85), and Gary Jeter, chief technology officer at Trustone Financial Credit Union.

At credit unions – and the federal regulator – security is a non negotiable must have.

Along the way you will also hear about the differences between CIOs and CTOs, where a CISO resides in a credit union (and why), and – listen closely – Jeter tosses out a fascinating idea for a newstyle 21st century safe deposit box that is there for data protection and, he suggests, it just might bring in revenues down the line.

Right there is what made the CU2VIP event special – clever ideas just pop up if you are listening for them.

Listen up.

 Money talks.

Fintechs are hungry for money.

Ray Crouse, CEO of Parsons Federal Credit Union – and a CU 2.0 Podcast veteran (episode link here) – talked in detail at the CU2VIP-Live event about how credit unions and fintechs both can harness the money raising ability of CUSOs, credit union service organizations.

Ray, by the way, is also chair of the board of NACUSO, the National Association of Credit Union Service Organizations.

Parsons, incidentally, is not a huge credit union. It has assets of around $265 million – but Crouse has found a few million dollars that will get invested in CUSOs.

Why? In this short podcast he tells why he sees CUSOs as crucial to credit unions today, maybe especially today when many are looking for new income sources.

Consider this all you wanted to know about CUSOs and credit unions but didn’t know who to ask.

Listen up.

 The inaugural CU2VIP-Live event will become a Woodstock like meeting in this sense: yes, hundreds of thousands went to Woodstock but if you  asked for a show of hands of those who were there be ready to count well into the millions.

Five years from now many will say, yes, I was there at the first CU2VIP-Live event.

We were actually there and what you will be hearing this week are snippets of short talks with participants – who also were there.

The first episode: Martin Walker with NextLevel Ventures with its $250 million-plus venture fund for investments in fintech oriented CUSOs that will bring next gen tech to the credit union industry.

The big idea: to stay competitive with mega banks and fintechs credit unions have to up their technology game.

The better idea: by investing in early stage fintechs credit unions can get a sizable jump on the market and just maybe will gain competitive advantages.

Sound good?

You bet.

Keep listening and you will also hear why Walker attended CU2VIP-Live and what he got out of it.

Listen up.

Boring. Old. Anachronistic.

Are those the words that come to mind when you think of calculators?

Guess what: maybe those adjectives apply to the calculators at your financial institution’s website…but that is not how Chase Neinken, a co-founder of fintech Chimney, sees them.

That’s because Chimney is in the business of creating calculators that engage members in looking at their finances in new ways.

Chew on the company’s mantra: Engage more customers. Fund more loans.

You know you now want to know more about Chimney.

This podcast will be the short course. Then go to the website – link in the show notes – click into the Chimney website and you will find some 30 templates that are there to try for free.

As in: at no cost.

Neinken in the podcast also reveals that the typical Chimney FI customer is billed under $1000 monthly. That’s for 10 calculators.  Fees are not based on institution size or number of members. And there is no minimum contract, no need for any time commitment.

You understand calculators. We all do. But the Chimney message is that there is a new breed of calculators that you won’t typically find on a credit union website but your members will find them at fintechs such as Nerd Wallet.

Can that member be won back?

Neinken says sure, with Chimney’s calculators.

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

How many loan applications does your credit union reject because of the applicant’s credit score?

Harder question: how many times are those credit scores erroneously lowered due to faulty information in credit reports?

Listen to Clint Lotz, ceo of TrackStar AI, and the answer is that plenty of loan apps are rejected for exactly those reasons.

What if your institution could harness machine learning tools to swiftly analyze a credit report and identity probable errors that when fixed would result in a 50 to 100 point jump in the credit score?

Sound good? That’s why you want to listen to Lotz as he talks about contemporary, cutting edge credit repair tools that will enable a credit union to empower a loan applicant to quickly initiate repair of his/her credit report and, in the process, position the credit union to comfortably grant the credit the applicant seeks.

How good does that sound?

Why haven’t you heard of similar before? Probably, says Lotz, because it is all new, enabled by the emergence of inexpensive cloud based computing (think AWS, Amazon Web Services).  But powerful cloud on demand computing is here and that has made it possible to analyze loan apps and credit reports in wholly new ways, says Lotz.

Along the way you want to hear what Lotz has to say about FICO.  No hints here as to what he says. But buckle up when this moment arrives.

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

 NSF has become the new four letter within the financial industry.  While many institutions have grown dependent upon the $30 or so they charge a customer/member for an NSF, Washington DC is revving up to throw shame at FIs that impose those fees.

What’s a credit union to do?

A year ago we did a podcast with Joel Schwartz, founder of the then fledgling DoubleCheck, a company created to help consumers – and their FIs – better navigate NSFs. You are going to want to listen to that podcast – link here.

A lot has happened since that podcast. Washington DC has gotten more vocal about NSFs – you aren’t the only one having nightmares about the CFPB and Elizabeth Warren.

A lot of FIs – from Chase to B of A to many credit unions have slashed or eliminated NSF fees. You might think that this is curtains for Schwartz and DoubleCheck.

Think again.

There is the NSF and then there are the ripple effects such as late fees imposed by merchants and credit card companies. Often the late fees can add up to lots of money that inflicts still more damage and pain on a consumer struggling to stay afloat. That’s where DoubleCheck’s patented technology comes in. It gives an early warning to the consumer about late fees heading his/her way and it also offers alternatives (such as putting some charges on a credit card).

This is win-win. It’s good for the consumer and good for the FI (and it does not create bad press which doing nothing can).

You might think this will be a somber podcast, talking about bounced checks and fees and cranky politicians.  Be prepared instead to laugh. Schwartz knows what he is dealing with is serious stuff but he is a man who can see the lighter side too.

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