credit union

by Robert McGarvey

 Be real – few credit unions can genuinely be all things to all members because how big would the institution have to be?

As you ponder that – really drill into the idea that there can be success in being small – now consider a fintech named ZSuite Technologies.  It has three product lines that it makes available to its financial institution partners: ZRent, aimed at property managers and landlords; ZDeposit, again aimed at property managers and landlords, this tool helps track rental deposits and understand the laws vary by state, sometimes by city; and ZEscrow, which helps escrow account holders – such as lawyers and government agencies – better track and manage those monies.

All niche? You bet but that’s the intent.  The initial tools grew out of a Massachusetts community bank which wanted ways to better compete in a marketplace where it sometimes seems that only behemoths thrive. That’s when a lightbulb clicked. Property managers and small landlords had lots of problems – how many still keep paper records? – and so computer skills were harnessed to help solve those problems.

And then why not attempt to persuade those property managers and landlords to shift most – maybe all – of their banking to the institution that helps solve their nagging business problems?

The escrow tools – the most recent addition to the portfolio – grew out of the discovery that for many escrow accounts are a real hassle.  But the right computer programming could sole the problems.

All small? You bet. But small can be beautiful.

On the podcast to tell the story of ZSuite is the CEO Nathan Baumeister. He tells about the company’s formation, why small is beautiful, and ZSuite’s ambitions to offer its tools to more credit unions.

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 tough out there.  That’s a paraphrase of how Jill Nowacki, a 20 year veteran of the credit union industry and presently CEO of Humanidei + O’Rourke where she focuses on talent recruitment for credit unions.

When fast food outlets are advertising starting pay at $15 and up per hour in much of the country you get a hint of how tough it is right now to recruit for credit unions.

But the problems aren’t limited to entry level jobs.  In this podcast Nowacki talks at length about issues in filling c-suite jobs (even CEO slots) and also the increasing challenges in recruiting new members for the board of directors.

One takeaway from this podcast: start thinking strategically about employees and board members.  Random just isn’t going to hack it anymore.

Also focus in on the credit union advantages in hiring – for instance a genuine community focus and a focus not on profits but on doing good.  Many of us – and especially many younger people – put a high priority on those attitudes and credit unions have the right stuff.

Nowacki admits that at senior level jobs banks have a powerful attraction – stock options that can produce personal wealth.  Credit unions do not have options.  Bur they have that powerful draw of a culture committed to doing good. And that will bring in job applicants.

Nowacki does not underplay the difficulties in today’s hiring marketplace but she nonetheless is upbeat. That’s the attitude that just may prevail in today’s talent wars.

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

 She’s smart. She has around 20 years experience at Inclusiv, the association for community development financial institutions and its predecessor organization. And she has put a lot of attention on African American Credit Unions.  Will they survive? Does it matter?

Meet Pamela Owens, a SVP at Inclusiv and she comes with a lot to tell us.

As for African American credit unions, they will survive and, yes, it definitely matters, says Owens in this podcast.  She tells why.

She also gives a grade for credit union industry efforts regards Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts (and know she is not an easy grader).

Along the way we talk about progress African Americans have made in regard to credit union employment – and the progress they need to make in regard to C-suite employment.

Credit unions, unlike banks, are birthed with a moral reason for their existence. Banks exist to profit their shareholders.  Credit unions – especially CDFIs – exist to bring financial services to the underserved and that is indeed a reason to get up in the morning.

If you want to feel good about being in the credit union industry this is the podcast you want to listen.  Of course you will also get some to-do’s – but this is work that isn’t going to be finished soon.  

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

Go to the website for Otomo and here’s what jumps out at you: “Be the money platform people love. Turn any account holder into an avid user with autonomous personal money management.”

Read it again.

What Otomo is about is a revolution in our digital money management and here is a fact: on a fundamental level, online and mobile banking are not substantially different from what debuted in the mid 1990s.  

Another fact: PFMs are not significantly more engaging than they were when they were introduced a generation ago.

Otomo’s plan is to revolutionize all of that.

To rethink how we bank.

And, yes, to make it all much more engaging – and fun! – than we are accustomed to.

On its LinkedIn page, Otomo says about itself: “Picture a world where your money knows where to go as soon as it hits your bank account, organizing itself in real-time. Sounds like something out of Blade Runner? It’s not. “Otomo is delivering on banking’s ultimate promise of hyper-personalized cash management tools today. We deliver our service directly through your favorite financial institution or money app. In other words, you’ll quickly be able to offer smart banking that can provide engaging, long-lasting, and meaningful experiences to your customers.”
Ready to hear more about the Otomo revolution? In this podcast you will hear at length from Khellar Crawford, CEO and co-founder of Otomo and you will also hear why he founded it and why your credit union just may wat to explore deploying it to your members.
Face it? Members increasingly want more from their digital banking experience than they are getting.  Otomo just may be what they are hunting.
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

Money woes.

It sounds like the title of a blues song but, ask Peter Rice, Chief Banking Officer at Workers Credit Union in Massachusetts, and he will tell you it’s not an oldie but today’s lyric and he can prove it with a recent Central Mass survey that found 65% of the residents said they were unsure, stressed, or extremely stressed about money.  

Ouch. that’s a lot of anxiety but, said Rice, it’s exactly a place where a credit union could and should help and, in that way, it will also gain a competitive edge.

In the process, Workers has introduced a new branch concept – called PlanIt – which, get this, features an interactive hologram named Olivia and a short, perky robot named Pepper.  

I don’t kid you.

That’s because the Workers hope with its new branch is that it will be welcoming, inclusive, but also will help inspire members to achieve their personal financial wellness.

A stat that hit Rice like a brick is that most of us – even the seemingly well off – don’t have $400 in ready cash to deal with financial emergencies and yet this past 18 months have been a text book illustration of how the unexpected and unimagined can become our reality.

We need to be financially well to deal with these speed bumps in our life highway.

A goal of the PlanIt centers – Workers has opened three and has plans for more – is to help members to feel empowered and also to get them more engaged with the credit union.

And, yeah, people do come into the branches to interact with Olivia- who is multi lingual and very helpful – and also with Pepper who is cheery.

Is this the future of the credit union branch?

Is this how a credit union can win the battle for the member?

Expect to hear challenges to credit union orthodoxies in this podcast.  Rice thinks into the future and in this podcast he tells his route to getting there. By the way that accent you hear is not a rogue Boston lilt. It’s from Rice’s native Ireland.  

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

Ask Kavita Singh – a vice president at payments company Payrailz – what’s a smart way to differentiate a credit union in a a competitive marketplace that is ever more cluttered and her answer is succinct: AI.

As she wrote in a recent Credit Union Times article, “Credit union leaders must go a step further and find a true strategic differentiator. This can be found via artificial intelligence.”

A few years ago AI was akin to The Matrix – kind of a cool but spacey idea and, truth to tell, none but the very biggest credit unions even had it on their “learn about” lists.

That’s changed.

AI is suddenly everywhere.  Call your cellphone provider and a machine will answer.  Ditto at the big credit card companies.  Also airlines. And down a lengthening list of institutions that, increasingly, turn to machines to find information, answer customer questions, solve problems.

In Singh’s view, credit unions are ideally positioned to win at AI, mainly because they already have bushels of member data and that data, properly used, will tell how best to serve this member’s needs right now.

Singh gives this for instance: “For example, a member may pay a particular bill around a certain time of month. AI will learn this behavior and begin to proactively alert, or remind, members in advance of the pending bill.”

Think about that. A simple nudge may help save a member a late fee and that is a way to build member loyalty.

AI can also predict in advance when a member is about to bounce a check and that’s not black magic. It’s knowing the account balance and also knowing what bills are likely to come in soon and if the numbers don’t add up that member could be prodded to shift money from another place into an account to cover the incoming bills.  That means more late fees saved.

Think too about how good companies like Amazon and Netflix have gotten about predicting what you want to consume next.  They are not guessing.  What they are doing is cranking in past consumer behavior and taking a very educated guess about what this consumer wants next.

AI is changing our lives and it will be a factor in what credit unions thrive (and which don’t).

You want to hear Singh on credit unions and AI.

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

You know the income of many of your members.

Now here’s the big question: do you know what they are spending it on?

Down to the SKU level – that is, on exactly what are they spending?

You want to meet Izabella Gabowicz, COO and a founding team member at Toronto based fintech Sensibill, a company built around the insight that financial wellness is not one size fits all.  Joe’s financial wellness might include a craft beer a day, wile Susie’s might favor a non alcoholic kombucha a day and, yeah, knowing such differences night help a financial institution deliver more customized financial wellness programming.

Says Sensibill about itself, “At Sensibill, we’re working to make financial services personal—you could say, more human. We build products that reveal insights into everyday spend that can be used to truly personalize financial services. And in doing so, help people achieve their unique version of financial wellness.”

Focus on that: insights into personal daily spend.

It all adds up. A newspaper, a cup of coffee, a short taxi ride and who is keeping track?

Sensibill can.

How?  Listen to this podcast where Gabowicz extols the benefits of SKU level spending data.

Know too that Sensibill’s products touch 60 million people worldwide.

Call this financial wellness 2.0.

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

 Kelli Ellsworth Etchison,  chief marketing officer and chief diversity officer at the $950 million, Lansing, Mich.-based LAFCU and a member of Michigan’s Black Leadership Advisory Council, and Gary Lee is Chief Client Office at MDT, Member Driven Technology, a tech focused CUSO, are in this podcast to tell why DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – matter to credit unions.

Here’s the big question Lee addresses: how does MDT explain to its owners, customers and prospects that it – a CUSO that specializes in delivering cloud based core processing – puts a large emphasis on DEI?  What business is this of a tech focused CUSO?

It’s a central concern, explained Lee in the podcast and he added that MDT has even signed new customers who said their preference is to do business with companies that share their concerns about social justice and equality issues.

As for Etchison, she puts a DEI concern on the table that we have not heard before in over a half dozen DEI focused podcasts.  Her idea is that we have to stop looking at DEI simply as a concern inside the four walls of the credit union and instead look at it in a bigger community orientation.  Her point: until there is real DEI in the community, a credit union’s DEI focus can produce only so much good.

That is a huge idea and a huge challenge. Many credit unions are doing very well in regard to DEI inside walls – but how about in the community?

The mammoth idea here is that systemic racism results in, for instance, low credit scores for many – and so they become prey for payday lenders rather than good credit union members.

Help more people in your community achieve the successes they deserve and the result will be a stronger. more successful credit union.

How large is that idea?

You might sat the subtitle for this podcast is do good for your credit union or CUSO by doing good for the community.

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

Newsflash: ask the experts and they will tell credit union executives that a tidal wave of fraud very likely will be crashing into them and soon.

Why? For the past year criminals have been kept busy attempting to cash in on the various federal and state government pandemic related relief programs such as PPP loans.  That money is drying up so they are casting their eyes in search of new targets and you just may have a bullseye on your back.

That’s why you need to hear this wide ranging conversation with two Jack Henry fraud and financial crimes experts, Rene Perez and Nat Southern.

This is a conversation about crime trends and also about crime trends that remain largely ignored.

A big trend for instance is that as financial institutions, especially the big ones, have toughed their perimeter defenses, criminals have shifted focus and are eyeing credit union members for vulnerabilities – which they very often will find.

Perez says a trigger for this is that many financial institutions have simply gotten very sophisticated, often in response to prodding from regulators.

But he adds that he talks with maybe 10 small financial institutions a week that are still doing a lot of their fraud work on paper, with humans doing the reporting.,

That increasingly is just not adequate, not when smart criminals enter the battle.

You will also hear a phrase – “willful blindness.” That’s a term regulators are using to describe an institution’s failure to detect fraud perpetrated by insiders or perhaps by friends or community leaders.  

This is not a technical conversation.  It is more in the nature of cops and robbers and what you need to know about the robbers who want to steal your credit union’s money.

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.

Welcome to the CU2.0 doubleheader podcast where you will hear two perspectives on DEI and the industry. 

“We are stronger together.” That is what Emma Norman, director of learning and development at Local Government Federal Credit Union and also chief diversity officer at the African American Credit Union Coalition, has to say when asked why LGFCU is all in when it comes to supporting the Credit Union DEI Collective.

She adds that what she tells credit unions is that “DEI has to be part of your strategy.”

Think on that.  DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion, a movement that gained force in the past year as evidence multiplied that the United States is a country with deep, lingering racial divides – just maybe is a whole lot more than a nice to do.

“DEI is a business imperative,” said Lynn Heckler, chief talent officer at PSCU. Her point: the credit unions and allied companies that want longterm success will be very sure they look much like their communities and across America those communities are increasingly diverse,

This is a wide ranging podcast, with two very different voices and perspectives but the two women agree on this: DEI is a real, important concern.

Local Government FCU of course is a powerhouse. Its assets exceed $3 billion.

PSCU is the nation’s leading payments CUSO – it supports 1500 credit unions and their many billions of payments annually.

These are two important institutions – and that is why it matters that they are saying DEI is real and it is real  for any business.

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