credit union

by Robert McGarvey

What you don’t know about digital marketing can be your undoing. That is 2021 fact.

For some years credit union c-suite occupants have shrugged off digital marketing – it’s just for kids, our members skew old.  Maybe that was true (maybe it wasn’t as true as the c-suiters believed) but what now has become indisputable in our pandemic era is that digital is here and it has become a significant part of just about every life.

That includes credit union members.

Where’s a credit union to get started in digital marketing? That’s what you will hear about in this podcast with Amber Callahan, VP of marketing at 1st Advantage FCU in Virginia, and Kristin Harrison, director of business development at Web Strategies, also in Virginia.

They have had a multi-year journey together and you will learn how to get started in digital marketing and how to go to next, higher levels.

Do note: this is pretty much a tech free podcast.  There’s no need to have a techie at your side for this one.

And accept the reality: we have entered the zone where tech is what matters. To quote the New York Times about Google and Facebook: “these tech companies are rich and powerful because they are the biggest sellers of advertising in the world.”

Digital already accounts for more than half of global ad spend.  Many billions of dollars get spent on digital advertising.  There are good reasons for that. You will hear about that in this podcast.

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

 If you had asked me ten years ago what the future was for corporate credit unions I probably would have said: they have one?

There were reasons for cynicism: You remember Wescorp, right? There are links in the show notes if you need memory refreshing.

But – and this is a huge but – there are literally thousands of small credit unions that needed and still need a corporate credit union to provide crucial assistance in a range of functions, from payments (especially contemporary ultra fast money movement) to short term liquidity.

I covered the corporate credit union beat for a few years at Credit Union Times and, while I cannot say the sector every thrilled me, little by little I grew to see corporates as essential in today’s credit union universe.  Were the credit union sector to shrink down to a few hundred behemoths corporates likely would vanish.

But in a world with 5000+ credit unions, many minuscule, the need for corporates remains.

Have they modernized? Are they part of 21st century financial services or are they more of a curio shop of dusty processes and tools?

Today you hear the answer.

That’s because in this podcast you will hear from Eric Dotson, EVP at fintech Aptys, and Jaime Agonstino, Vizo’s Director of Marketing and Business Development.  

Vizo is the product of a merger of Mid-Atlantic Corporate Credit Union and First Carolina Corporate Credit Union.

Aptys enters this picture because it was tasked with modernizing Vizo’s payments technology, which had been something of a rat’s nest of tangled threads from the two merged in partners.  The tools just would not suffice in what is becoming a realtime payments world, Vizo knew it, and so it brought in Aptys to produce something new, bigger, better.

It was a multi-year process. Hear the details here.

Along the way you will also hear mention that some other corporates – Alloya and Catalyst – are doing similar with their payments. 

The message is plain: corporate credit unions are making changes to seek to stay relevant.

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

Some credit unions are making lots of very profitable member business loans.  Most aren’t.  In fact, by Mark Ritter’s count, maybe 300 of the nation’s credit unions are genuine players in this business. The rest are dabblers, he says.

That’s a shock because in the last couple years there has been a stampede of credit unions eager to get into member business lending. The reasons are obvious.  There has been an avalanche of deposits that need to be put to work.  Meantime, both the home mortgage and car loan markets are sputtering, definitely as far as credit unions go.

The eyes in the credit union c-suite shift to local businesses and the question gets asked: how do we lend to them?

Ritter, longtime CEO of Pennsylvania based CUSO Member Business Financial Services, which specializes in member business lending, knows the reality.

About 80 credit unions are active with MBFS – 13 are owners – and they range in size from tiny to over $1 billion in assets.  Ritter pegs the MBFS sweet spot as institutions in the $300 million to $1 billion range but, he says, MBFS has no size limits, big or small.

MBFS in many ways provides credit unions with turnkey service. That means they prospect for borrowers, negotiate the terms, service the loan, and do pretty much everything except provide the capital to lend.

Want to know why member business lending initiatives sputter at many credit unions? Also want to know who not to hire to make those loans?

Ritter has the answers in this wide ranging podcast that is a must listen for any credit union exec who wants to get into member business lending – or wants to do better at it.

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

What are the chief tools of old school debt collectors? Phone and US mail.  Two problems. Nobody answers the phone when it’s an unknown number (do you?) and US mail, increasingly, is tossed unread because all the important, urgent stuff comes via email.

Enter Debtsy, a fintech that is pioneering 21st century collection techniques that are kinder, gentler and – above all – digital. The chief Debtsy tools are email and its website and, in the process, Debtsy also uses data to sift through charged off debts to zero in on those borrowers who have both the means and the willingness to repay.

A lot of debtors have neither. Debtsy seeks to focus in on the borrowers where the potential for return is real. 

That approach looks vastly more effective than the old school techniques.  It also is highly cost efficient because much of it is automated.

You will hear all about 21st century debt collection in this podcast with Tyler Gillies, Debtsy’s director of operations.

Debtsy of course knows that most credit unions seek to have a positive image in their communities and so it avoids the bruising, demeaning tactics of at least some debt collectors.

What size credit unions will Debtsy work with?  Pretty much any size. Gillies says clients range from $10 billion+ behemoths to small credit unions.  In the podcast he also details exactly how a credit union starts with Debtsy, what the costs are, and how long it takes for Debtsy to get busy trying to collect. Spoiler: the whole process usually is very fast.

Sure, we know talking charged off debt is a something of a bummer – but this nonetheless is a surprisingly upbeat podcast.

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

Early in this podcast you will realize that  Alexey Krasnoriadtsev is a different kind of tech CEO.  For starters, this is a podcast where you will not hear much – probably nothing – that sends you to Google to look up words you don’t understand. But the bigger difference is that this is a tech CEO who talks about why it’s important that users of technology feel loved by their tech, that credit unions and other financial institutions do right by their users (and Alexey backs that up by refusing to help efforts that don’t align with that philosophy), and who admits a lot of FI tech is blah – and he tells why that is so.

You know his work.  In podcast 172 you heard about Bank Dora, the innovative neo-bank birthed by a credit union.  BankingON worked on that project.

The core BankingON pursuit is creating new mobile banking apps and that means tools that do what the users want (rather than what the vendors and FIs want which is the norm).

Be prepared to be surprised, often in this podcast.  Especially if you are a CIO or CTO who knows how fintech execs talk.   

Alexey talks about his frustrations, his hopes, his dreams and why at day’s end he is a happy guy.

You didn’t expect to hear that, did you?

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

 

Meet Dora.  She just may change all that you think about mobile banking.

A product of USAlliance – a $2 billion credit union based in Rye, NY that happens to be the legacy IBM employees credit union – Dora is the first credit union attempt to create a so-called neo bank, that is a branchless institution with no bricks and mortar.

USAlliance has been joined in this effort by three other credit unions: Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union ($3.5B in assets) headquartered in St. Paul, Minn.; Digital Federal Credit Union ($9.8B in assets) in Marlborough, Mass.; Service Credit Union ($5B in assets) in Portsmouth, N.H.

It may be seeking others to join in helping to spread Dora which, presently, is aimed at low to moderate income Americans who may be underserved or unserved by traditional financial institutions.

Can Dora survive in a marketplace where there are heavily funded, venture backed competitors – Chime for instance? 

In this podcast USAlliance CEO Kris VanBeek offers candid, honest history about how and why Dora got birthed and how he sees it succeeding.

He is candid that he does not see Dora as a big money maker for USAlliance. But he believes it will generate a little profit.

He also indicates that Dora is going after different consumers than a Chime, say.  He anticipates that many of Dora’s accounts will carry low balances and the economics of running Dora will be unlike a Chime.

Want to find out about Dora? The app is available in the Apple App Store, also Google Play. Signing up for an account is shockingly fast and easy.  And Dora’s checking is free.

In this podcast VanBeek gives a shout out to BankingOn which played a significant part in creating the app.  Tune in to next week’s podcast which will be with BankingOn and how it sees the future of mobile banking (think better, slicker, easier to use apps and be ready to toss existing apps in the dustbin).

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

 Irrelevance beckons. And it will swallow many credit unions whole.

That is the message delivered by Andre Iervolino, a longtime credit union senior staffer who wrote a provocative piece in The Financial Brand entitled “10 Factors That Will Determine Banks’ Future Relevance.”

Reading is article will rock you because, frankly, he is not optimistic about the future of many credit unions.

A core reason is that, often, they just don’t get that technology is rewriting the game book.  What mattered 25 years ago does not count today.

In this podcast we explore the key takeaways of the article and the first is that the nature of a primary financial institution has changed and, said Iervolino, “Community financial institutions no longer compete only against the large banks within their marketplace, but also with big tech (Apple, Amazon, Google Checking, PayPal), fintechs, and neobank/mobile banks such as Chime, SoFi and Ally.”

He added: “On average, financial services customers have between five and eight relationships spread across multiple institutions, many of them not traditional banking providers.”

How do you compete against that complexity?

His second takeaway is remapping the future of the branch – think small footprint, cashless, staffed by Apple type geniuses and, yes, he tells how you will hire them. Hint: it involves paying a lot of money.

Next he throws the FICO score under the bus and proposes that credit unions adopt what he calls a Financial Health Score.

Along the way Iervolino offers key survival advice: Act like a startup.

Prepare to be challenged.

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

 Things are different today in financial services and, increasingly, there is a realization that we are not going back to “normal,” not later this year, probably not ever.  That means credit union executives have to think bigger – more boldly – about how to compete in a changing financial services landscape.

The podcast opens up with a huge credit union 2021 fact: institutions are awash in deposits.  Why? What to do with them?

Data-driven thoughts on that and many more credit union issues come from Tim Keith, chief strategist of Account Boost for SRM, an independent advisory firm that focuses on financial services companies, credit unions included.

In the podcast Keith tackles tough issues – how should credit unions pursue branch realignment, how can they do business banking right, why aren’t they better at offering online account opening, and what is a simple action step for deepening relationships with existing members.

It’s a wide ranging podcast – take notes because you will get ideas well worth developing as you seek ways to navigate today’s turbulent financial services currents.

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

 The language on the Finalytics.ai website is bold: “Our mission is simple: use technology to help financial institutions offer the same exceptional service they are known for in-branch, online. As digital commands a greater share of the customer touch, we are passionate about helping organizations grow and keep the promise of modern service excellence alive.”

Read that again.

For as long as I have been involved with credit unions, I have heard c-suite executives telling us that their differentiator is their people.

And then along came the pandemic.  What difference do your people mean to the member who does not want to set foot in a branch and in fact wants to move the relationship entirely into the digital realm?  

How do you deliver first rate member service through digital channels – and know that it can be done and in fact already is being done (think USAA and Chase)?

These are the questions that shape this podcast with the co-founders of Finalytics.ai, Craig McLaughlin,CEO, and Mark Ryan, chief analytics officer.

Along the way we explore why so many big data projects fizzled into failure at credit unions a decade ago and also why ai – artificial intelligence – is the engine that is reshaping financial services.

And note there are moments to be afraid.  For instance: a generation ago your institution had maybe 10 or 20 competitors. Now it has thousands and many aren’t even credit unions or banks.

That’s not to suggest throwing in the towel. But you will have a fight on your hands.

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

 The future of banking just may be voice – but that will probably mean talking with a computer. Already tens of millions of Bank of America customers use its Erica and that number is growing at a brisk rate.

It should be no surprise.  Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant are part of many of our lives today. We talk with machines. We like talking with machines.

Question: how is a credit union to compete in this sphere.

Enter Finn AI, a conversational banking company formed precisely to address these needs for credit unions and community banks.

Already Finn AI has a couple credit union customers – BECU is one. And it is looking for more.

That’s why it has scheduled an October 6 virtual conversational banking summit, a half day devoted to giving credit union and bank execs the information they need to make decisions about AI and conversational banking.

Did I mention it is free for credit union execs.

Link here.

If you can’t make the summit, sign up anyway and you’ll get a link so you can watch at a time more convenient for you.

Speakers include executives from Amazon, BECU, MX, United Federal Credit Union (also a Finn AI customer), and Kirk Drake, the founder of CU 2.0 and author of a book on AI.  

In this podcast, with Finn AI CEO and co-founder Jake Tyler, you will hear more about the summit but you also will here about Finn AI’s tools, its pricing, and why Tyler is persuaded that conversational AI banking just is not a technology that can be ignored.  It’s a candid discussion, tightly focused and to the point.

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