by Robert McGarvey
Loud, bold headlines splashed across the banking press a few weeks ago:
“Michigan credit union aims to buy Florida bank in year’s 5th such tie-up” reads one.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling.
Or isn’t it?
by Robert McGarvey
Don’t think that SPAC is just another four-letter word. For increasing numbers of startups and entrepreneurs, it just may be the abracadabra that unlocks wealth in fast motion.
By Robert McGarvey
Suddenly the Internet is afire with rumors that very soon we will all have to submit to a weigh in before boarding our next flight. Even the mainstream media has joined the frenzy. The headline on WKRC TV’s web page screamed: “Airlines may start weighing passengers before they can board flights.”
The Deseret News in Utah headlined: “Airlines might weigh passengers before boarding flights.” The subhead added: “A new initiative would require airlines to weigh passengers.”
The New York Daily News noted: “Airline passengers may have to get weighed before boarding.”
Unexpectedly, there even is a proposal involving passengers and weigh-ins that is kicking around Washington DC.
Before plunging into that, however, understand that airlines have had the option to weigh passengers for some years. Personally I have been asked for my weight several times when flying in Alaska. When planes are small and land on water the pilot needs to distribute weight in the plane with care. It may be an awkward question but there are times when you will be asked and when you think on it you will be glad the pilot asked.
Airlines also already require passengers to fit in a seat with a seatbelt buckled (an extension is OK) and the armrests down. Obese passengers who don’t fit can be required to buy a second seat or deplane.
Back to what triggered all this teeth gnashing: In May 2019 the FAA issued an advisory circular where it mulled what changes needed to be made in accurately guessing passenger weight (along with weight of carry-ons). That is important because an airplane has a maximum weight load and much of what is on the plane already is weighed (checked baggage and freight for instance). The big unknown is what we weigh and how much stuff we are stuffing into the overhead bins and under our seats.
Airlines had until June 12, 2021 to file a plan for more accurately estimating passenger weights. Thus the recent angst about possible mandatory weigh-ins.
Overweight planes do crash. Sometimes they are so stuffed they cannot manage a takeoff. Usually these are small, private planes but occasionally a commercial flight crashes due to excess weight – notably and sadly a 2003 US AIrways crash that killed 21. The NY Times lead gives the facts: “ A commuter plane that crashed on takeoff from Charlotte, N.C., in January was 400 to 1,000 pounds overweight, and two bags in its tail baggage compartment were so heavy that it took two handlers to carry each of them, a sign that the plane was tail-heavy as well, people involved in the investigation said.”
What grabs me in that paragraph is how comparative small the deadly weight was – perhaps a half ton or less.
Keep that number in mind.
In 1980 the average weight of an adult man was 172.2. A woman weighed 144.2
In 2014 the average man weighed 195.7. The average woman weighed 168.5.
Let’s assume 200 passengers on a plane, with males and females evenly split. That means the passengers now weigh at least 4780 pounds more, about two and one-half tons.
Seasonal weight differences also come into play. FAA numbers seem to believe we are five pounds heavier in the winter and that could be explained by a topcoat and a heavier weight suit.
So what the FAA is looking for in its 58 page advisory is a new game plan for guesstimating passenger weight for the purpose of deciding if a plane is safe to fly. Airlines had two main options. They could actually weigh every passenger in the boarding process, or they could rely on government estimates about our weight.
There never was a mandate that required passengers to be weighed.
Not surprisingly, per the Washington Post, airlines have indicated their preference for using government weight data. No airline contacted by Wapo indicated it had a plan to actually weigh passengers.
That shouldn’t be a surprise. As a nation we despise our annual weigh-in at a doctor’s office and often dispute the findings (“Im wearing heavy shoes, take off five pounds!”). We certainly would not welcome a public weigh-in with our weight flashed before a throng of passengers (doubtless all Keto diet practitioners). Of course no airline would inflict that on us.
Proving that there indeed are limits to how much abuse airlines will heap on us. And that perhaps is the biggest surprise in this blog.
by Robert McGarvey
An elderly member contacts you. He/she has a stack of medical bills, little in savings, but substantial equity in a home. What are the options? How can you help?
Two obvious choices are a HELOC and a reverse mortgage but there are significant problems with both. When there are no other options, well, maybe….
But now there is a third way and today’s podcast guest, Joe Cianciolo, CEO of HomePace, is here to tell us about what amounts to co-investing in single family homes (sorry condo owners, HomePace presently is not investing in them. It also is not interested in rental property or vacation homes).
What HomePace does is buy an option to purchase up to 17.5% of a home. It pays for that ownership now, But it does not collect until the home is sold, or in rare cases the owner buys out their position. That means HomePace is in for the longterm.
HomePace is a passive investor. It has no right to force a sale.
HomePace’s investment is not debt. It has no impact on the homeowner’s FICO score.
Another HomePace play is co-investing in a new home purchase. Say a buyer is cash short and can come up with only 10% of the purchase price for a downpayment. HomePace may match that 10%, qualifying the buyer for more favorable loan terms.
In such cases, HomePace envisions the credit union as the mortgage originator – and that’s a plus in a time when credit union mortgage market share continues to slip. A new tool in a credit union’s lending tool set just may help close more deals.
Note: HomePace requires its owners to have a minimum 10% equity in a home. It will not invest in a no down or 3% down purchase. Lenders who portfolio mortgages generally will accept the HomePace participation.
In this podcast, Cianciolo tells how HomePace works, what it looks for in a deal, what states it operates in (and one state where it believes it unlikely it ever will do business), and why it especially likes credit unions as partners.
A number of players now are in this co-investing market but a HomePace distinction it that it already is working with one credit union on its deals, it believes it will announce several more shortly, and it is actively seeing additional credit union partners.
There are many cases where a co-investor is an obvious advantage in a deal. Check out HomePace and this co-investing universe. There just may be advantages for members in need.
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
That is the question.
You might think every cruise line has the same Covid protocols. The plague is a national, indeed planetary, issue we all face, and therefore a uniform response might seem the most straightforward path to thwarting the disease and its crippling paralysis of the cruise business for well over a year. You would be wrong.
The four big lines – Carnival, Royal Caribbean, NCL, and MSC – have four different responses.
And some lines have different responses for different ships and different countries and even different US states.
Worse, at least three ships in the early cruise fleets already have Covid cases. More on that below, but this reality underlines that Covid is a persistent threat that needs dealing with in our world.
Here is my advice about 2021 cruising.
First off, don’t even think about sailing from Florida or Texas.
Our ban on all Texas and Florida cruises is because the governors of those states and their legislatures have made it illegal for a business to demand proof of vaccination of its customers and, whoosh, there goes the basic cruise line tactic for preventing a recurrence of the devastating and deadly Covid-19 epidemics on multiple cruise ships last year.
Understand, to bypass a lot of CDC hoops involved in restarting cruising, a line can fast track its sailings by requiring that 95% of passengers and 95% of crew be vaccinated. Texas and Florida are saying no can do.
The Texas governor has no leverage – only Galveston ranks as a top 10 embarkation port. It is easy to tell the Lone Star State’s governor to pound sand and New Orleans – the 11th busiest cruise port – is ready to step in and pick up the slack. Me, I’d much prefer a Corpse Reviver in Nola anyway.
But Florida is a more complex matter. Three of the top three cruise embarkation ports are in Florida and four of the top 10. Eliminating this state from cruise sailing is thorny- and potentially devastating to tens of thousands of Floridians whose livelihoods are dependent on cruising. Word of advice to Floridians: tell your governor he is demanding an unscientific and dangerous approach to cruising that will unnecessarily endanger passengers and crew.
Until he changes his policy our advice stands: just do not cruise out of Florida. Lots of Caribbean islands are scrambling to fill in for Florida. There are and will be cruises in the region.
Aren’t some cruise lines saying their ships embarking from Florida will require vaccinations? Yes they are. But I see no reason to believe they will have the backbone to stick with that position in defiance of the Florida governor. Maybe they will. But I would not risk my health on that bet.
The ante is upped, starkly and scarily, by the fact that three recent cruises have been scarred by Covid-19 cases. An MSC Mediterranean cruise announced that two passengers – traveling separately – tested positive for Covid-19 in routine tests administered by the line. The ship was denied docking in a Malta port – shades of early 2020 cruising! – but went to Sicily where the passengers who tested positive disembarked.
MSC passengers on this cruise were not required to be vaccinated but were required to take two tests, one a few days before the cruise and one midway in the cruise.
“If anything, this is another demonstration that the protocol works,” a line spokesman told the Washington Post.
If he says so….
I will not even think of sailing a ship that does not require vaccinations for the vast majority of passengers and crew.
But that may not be assurance enough. Breaking news is that Royal Caribbean has cancelled a number of sailings of a new ship because of an outbreak of Covid-19 among crew. No passengers were yet on board. But…
Meantime, two passengers aboard a Celebrity ship that set sail from St. Maarten – with all passengers vaccinated — tested positive in a required end of cruise testing, according to the Washington Post.
The passengers had been sharing a cabin.
Passengers were required to show proof vaccination and also to show a negative test result taken within 72 hours of embarkation to sail on the Celebrity ship.
Presumably the passengers who subsequently tested positive met those requirements. One hopes they weren’t using the counterfeit vaccination cards that apparently are popular in the anti-vax and Trumpie circles.
“This situation demonstrates that our rigorous health and safety protocols work to protect our crew, guests and the communities we visit,” a statement from the line said.
I have a question – probably you do too. What vaccine did the passengers have? Both Pfizer and Moderna boast effectiveness rates around 95%. The J & J jab is around 76% effective. And if you had a choice – I know if I had a choice – we’d sail only with those vaccinated with the Moderna or Pfizer shots.
But right now we don’t have those choices.
We do have a choice of lines we’d sail on and, right now, the policies do differ dramatically. MSC has no vaccination requirement, NCL has a 100% requirement. Carnival, the biggest cruise line, says 95% of passengers will be vaccinated. Royal Caribbean seems to have different policies for different lines. Celebrity seems to be sticking with a 100% vaccination rule. Royal Caribbean itself says it will not have a vaccination requirement on voyages embarking from Florida and Texas but it adds that unvaccinated passengers will have to meet special, unspecified requirements.
So, should you cruise? That’s your call. Personally, I am in no rush to climb aboard a ship leaving any port. I am far busier plotting a possible European vacay in the fall.
I want to cruise again, I am sure I will, but I cannot say with any certainty when that will happen. We are still in a pandemic, people. The disease keeps morphing, nobody knows how the vaccines will hold up, and I frankly like my odds a lot better on land than in a sealed container at sea.
But monitor the many cruises that now are embarking. Are they suffering Covid cases? How are they handling them? Your answers will tell if you are ready and eager to cruise. Or not.
by Robert McGarvey
Jon Voorhees has spent his work life optimizing branch performance. He has headed initiatives where an institution added hundreds of branches and he has headed initiatives where hundreds of branches were closed. His last job at a financial services company – he now is a consultant based in Washington State – was as a senior vice president at Bank of America and you can guess how many challenges he faced at that bank.
But he knows credit unions too and in recent years has worked with a number on a simple question: how to optimize the branch strategy. The question is easy to ask but hard to answer, especially since so much that impacts branching, from the pandemic to financial technology, keeps changing.
One thing Voorhees is adamant about: branches aren’t going way.
Another thing: branches make for remarkably effective billboards for financial institutions. Maybe you cannot afford a sizable ad daily in your local newspaper, but a properly positioned branch, with the right kind of signage. just may succeed in reminding your community that you are still thriving, still ready to help with their financial services needs.
This is a wide ranging conversation, something of a primer on branch optimization,
Along the way you will find out where in supermarket branches make sense (or not), what could possibly go wrong with a branch that featured a Starbucks, and exactly where a branch needs to be in a shopping center.
Personally, I went into this podcast thinking, close’em all. I had come to think that branches had served their purpose and were done. After giving Voorhees a listen, I now believe there is indeed a valuable place for branches in the credit union system – but only when they are smartly sited, tweaked for today’s times, and wear the right, eye-catching signage. And many institutions just aren’t getting that right.
The fixes are in this podcast.
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
My bag beckons, it is half packed and you are likely doing similar with grand visions of a pint of bitters in London or an Armagnac in Paris or a Vinho Verde in Porto.
Sober up. It is not happening, not this summer.
Not unless you have a long held ambition to be an extra in Marat/Sade.
Tune back to May 7. That’s when the UK issued its list of so-called green light countries. That’s where UK residents can travel without ado and return similarly. No tests, no quarantines. Not on the list were France, Spain and the US. On it were the Faroe Islands, the Falklands (aka the Malvinas), Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Iceland, Gibraltar, Israel, and Portugal (plus a couple Portuguese islands).
No fools the Brits, this unleashed a stampede to Portugal (even in a pandemic would you crave an excursion to the Malvinas and, no, I have no idea how you would get to these remote south Atlantic islands).
Flashforward to June 3 and a reshuffled UK list of safe destinations excluded Portugal and from June 7 on Brits returning from Portugal need to self isolate for 10 days and take two PCR tests. Of course that change triggered stampedes at the Lisbon and Porto airports – some carriers even shifted extra metal there to appease the exiting mobs.
That paragraph captures why we aren’t going to Europe this summer.
Don’t think it’s a Brit thing that has nothing to do with us. Here’s the deal: a lot of how we travel to Europe will be impacted by what limitations the UK puts on travel. And there is no guessing that.
What’s more, just about every big nation now is behaving as erratically as the UK. Including us. Including much of Europe.
Don’t think the Falklands are a go, either. They aren’t. Tourists are currently denied entry, including cruise ship passengers. I know, drat.
Nothing is certain, nothing can be counted on with international travel. What we know to be true today may be ancient nonsense tomorrow and the reason of course is that the pandemic keeps morphing, nobody knows how the vaccines will fare against still emerging variants, and nations are frantically trying to balance public health concerns with demands by their domestic travel providers to lower the barriers and let the cash registers ring.
A week ago when I looked, the sane way for me to get to Porto was to fly LAX to LHR, LHR to OPO and that was easy and modestly priced on BA – but with Portugal now demoted to the UK amber list, will the flights remain? Probably not. Because very probably most Brits will stay home – or convince themselves they really want to go to Iceland, a nation with twice as many sheep as people. Look it up.
And when the UK’s next list reshuffle is issued around June 24 will Portugal be upgraded to green and, who knows, maybe Iceland will have been downgraded to red as the virus has jumped to sheep.
Just kidding about Iceland’s sheep.
But no joking that there is no guarantee where Iceland will fall in the next reshuffle.
Just about everything else also remains uncertain. Spain, for instance, has said it will be open to all vaccinated travelers as of June 7 but hunt for details and there are none. Will it apply to Americans? Only vaccinated travelers are welcome.
Americans flying to France are welcome – if they arrive with a very recent PCR or antigen test. Only vaccinated travelers need apply.
A complication is that fake vaccination cards continue to be sold online so who could trust one? Especially at an overseas passport desk? We don’t know how foreign governments will validate CDC vaccination cards presented by Americans and we don’t know what additional proofs they may require. Thus the French solution.
Portugal, by the way, says it will open to vaccinated US travelers. “We are in a position to approve the opening of non-essential travel and flights to people from the U.S. to Portugal as long as they have a vaccination certificate,” Economy Minister Pedro Siza Vieira, cited by Portuguese radio Renascenca, said on June 8, per Reuters. But no details are known.
Meantime, all Americans returning to the US, vaccinated or not, need produce a current covid test result. There do not appear to be any countries to which this does not apply, although as with everything else in this column the facts change seemingly daily.
That border entry test requirement from the CDC dates to January 12, however, and there has been no motion to change it.
Are you beginning to feel just a little crazy?
Personally, I find myself thinking if maybe I would prefer a vacay in Yellowstone – is Yogi Bear still around? With the right laughs I just might forget how crazymaking and frustrating trying to plan international travel has come.
by Robert McGarvey
You know the headline – in fact you could write the story on the explosion in digital banking transactions during the last pandemic year.
But do you know this: there has also been an explosion in the use of digital self-service information gathering and problem solving.
That’s the surprising news in a report from TimeTrade SilverCloud, a provider of customer engagement solutions.
In this podcast Bill Clark, CEO of TimeTrade SilverCloud offers the specifics – and prepared to be surprised. Everybody knew members have been using digital to check account balances and pay bills but who knew members were making strong use of digital to investigate everything from PPP loans to how to get contactless debit cards.
By TimeTrade SilverCloud’s data, “Usage of online self-service increased 38% from March to April 2020 and has sustained a level 69% greater even a year later – demonstrating a shift in customer behavior to leverage self-service options before reaching out for live support.”
Another factoid: Usage of knowledge based in mobile banking apps is up 82% year on year.
A third blockbuster number: “Chatbot usage on bank and credit union websites and mobile apps increased 272% year-over-year.”
A last fact: Credit unions saw a 107% increase in year over year in pre-scheduling in branch appointments from Q1 2020 to Q1 2021.
The numbers tell the story: Something big has happened in regard to how we do our financial services.
This is a brisk 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
Call this the ultimate counterintuitive path to riches: right now, across the continent, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs are moving ahead with restaurant startups. Crazy? Maybe just crazy smart.
The crazy part is this: the country is littered with dead, closed restaurants, casualties of the pandemic. Food industry research firm Datassential has a gloomy obituary report. Its numbers show that 10.2% of all restaurants in the US closed permanently since the start of the pandemic when health policies in much of the country required restaurants to eliminate indoor dining. For many restaurants, that prompted them to shut down. Almost all had planned to re-open, but as the pandemic continued to play out — it’s now 15 months and counting — quite a few have just walked away from their leases. How many? Datassential says its count is 79,438 that have closed for good, and that’s as of late March.
Probably another 10,000 have closed since.
That’s why those who are jumping into new restaurants are thinking differently. The old playbook just won’t work today.
by Robert McGarvey
Consider this podcast everything you wanted to know about credit unions and their social media channels but were afraid to ask. Or maybe you just didn’t know to ask.
But the reality today is that social media have emerged as a crucial communications outlet – and for some generations they may be the most important way to communicate.
And yet the channels are so new. Twitter started in 2006. Facebook dates back to 2004. Instagram was launched in 2010. LinkedIn dates back 2003.
But for most credit unions it is safe to say their significant involvement in social media dates back maybe a handful of years.
And the media themselves evolve and change.
That’s why you want to hear from Michelle Asher, a marketing manager with a specific focus on social media at ENT, the nation’s 25th largest credit union with assets of $6.7 billion.
Asher is the first fulltime manager for social media at ENT but she came to the job with 25 years of experience in public relations and communications.
In the podcast she talks about the learning curve involved in joining the credit union industry – not so hard at ENT, she says, because there are many knowledgeable, helpful staff. She also talks about when and how legal and compliance weigh in on her content.
Along the way, Asher talks about a social media policy for employees – and know that there are times and places where an employee post can bring risks to a credit inion, even when the post is on an employee’s personal account. If you haven’t thought about that issue, now is the time.
We also find out how the various social media channels differ – and what works on Facebook might fail on both LinkedIn and Twitter. That’s why professionals do not post the same content on multiple channels. Who knew?
Of course new channels keep emerging – think Tik Tok and ENT is not presently on it. Asher tells why.
This is an approachable conversation – but it has plenty of content both for credit unions with well oiled social media programs and those that are just dabbling in it.
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.