Grow Your Credit Union

Read the show notes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com Credit unions were built around the people you knew. Your neighbors, your coworkers, the people you could not avoid. Now communities form on Discord servers, Substack feeds, and shared Slack channels. So should we be pushing for rules that reflect that? In this episode: Why AI is making broken credit union processes faste...

The experience is where trust gets made or broken. Credit unions have always assumed theirs was safe. But somewhere between the app that locks you out and the branch that feels like a Saturday at the DMV, that assumption started expiring. In this episode: Why credit union values are failing to connect with younger generations and what to do about it What member data credit unions already have and...

Credit unions are running networks that look nothing like the ones they started with. Knowing exactly what is connected, who approved it, and what it permits turns out to be harder than it sounds. In this episode: Who is actually on the hook when a fintech vendor relationship goes wrong Why routine connectivity decisions carry risks that boards rarely understand What regulators actually expect whe...

Read the show notes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com Somewhere out there is a credit union board that poured themselves a bowl of nutritious succession planning. Most boards just grabbed the wrong box. In this episode: Why transformation failures almost never start with the technology and what leaders are missing before the project begins Why young credit union professional...

Read the show notes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com Your team is not underperforming because they are lazy. They are underperforming because they stopped believing that what they do changes anything. That is not a motivation problem. It is a leadership problem. And it has a fix that does not involve a single town hall or strategy deck. In this episode of Grow Your Credit U...

Read the show notes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com Credit unions are feeding communities, funding scholarships, and keeping members out of payday loan cycles. The only people who know about it are other credit union professionals. That's not humility. That's a problem. In this episode: Why the projects that stay on your list may be costing you more than the ones you kill...

Read the show notes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com A $12.6 billion merger collapsed. The credit unions are now in court. And somewhere in the middle of it all, a CEO allegedly told his merger partner he was a dictator and didn't care what anyone thought. The question worth asking isn't what went wrong. It's why nobody asked the right questions before the papers were signe...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com Every time a credit union has an unmet need, its ready to swipe right on a new vendor. But 450 matches later, nobody's having the hard conversation with the partners already sitting across the table. What if the answer was never a new vendor? What if it was just a better conversation with the ones you already chose? In thi...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com Nobody is buying bad technology on purpose. Credit unions are doing the best they can with cores that weren't built for the world they're operating in today, and the gap between what modern software promises and what actually plugs into your infrastructure is nobody's fault and everybody's problem. So how many more systems...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site:  growyourcreditunion.com The NCUA says deregulation is coming. Small credit union leaders say it's about time. But when the real burden isn't the rules on the books, it's the people enforcing them, does any of it matter? In this episode host Joshua Barclay  and co-host Becky Reed welcome Doug Wadsworth, President and CEO of Tri-CU Credit Union, t...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site:  growyourcreditunion.com There's nothing wrong with using AI to speed up your work. But when you start relying on it to do your job, well, your peers start to notice. "AI workslop" forces your colleagues to interpret, correct, and redo the work you were supposed to finish and they definitely resent you for it. This episode was recorded LIVE from...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site:  growyourcreditunion.com Your board thinks $100,000 is too much for a CEO because they never made more than $40,000 on the factory line. Your C-suite wants the credit union of old. And your employees? They're leaving, not for better pay, but because you're offering them a 1995 compensation package in 2026. In this episode: What age is your leader...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com We all think it: "If I just work longer, I'll get more done." But when one of your high performers starts operating this way, you need to step in immediately. Because they're not going to tell you they're burning out. So how do you catch it before they quit? In this episode: Why AI isn't making you dumber Why working 70 ho...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com Credit unions are out there chasing new members—spending on billboards, opening branches, crafting the perfect rate specials. Meanwhile, 80% of your existing members have one product with you and you haven't called them once. Maybe the new members you're looking for are actually the members you already have. In this episod...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site:  growyourcreditunion.com Deepfake technology has become so accessible that threat actors need only 10 to 30 seconds of audio and a $5 monthly subscription to convincingly impersonate executives, bypass authentication, and trick employees into catastrophic decisions. Credit unions face record ransomware attacks while most lack AI governance polici...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com A huge thanks to our sponsor, NCU-ISAO — Visit ncuisao.org/gycu to learn more.  Credit unions added 3 million new members last year, but 64% never made a single deposit or showed real activity. The problem isn't just about engagement strategy or welcome emails—it's that credit unions may just be making the fundamental act...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com A huge thanks to our sponsor, NCU-ISAO — Watch this video or visit ncuisao.org/gycu to learn more.  Credit unions invest heavily in stadium naming rights and campus partnerships to reach younger members, but those partnerships fall flat when the mobile app experience disappoints. Gen Z has been Wescom Financial's fastest g...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com Credit unions face steep member acquisition costs while losing 15% of their membership annually. But the institutions treating acquisition costs as the primary metric are missing what actually drives member loyalty, referable experiences, and long-term value that can't be calculated on spreadsheets. In this episode of Grow...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site:  growyourcreditunion.com Want to learn more about SBS CyberSecurity?  Watch this video  or visit  SBSCyber.com The credit unions succeeding with AI didn't wait for comprehensive vendor solutions or regulatory clarity. They started asking one question: what can employees do with AI today? In this episode of Grow Your Credit Union, host Joshua Barc...

Read the shownotes and full transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com Want to learn more about SBS CyberSecurity?  Watch this video  or visit  SBSCyber.com The top 10 credit unions pay their employees $25,000 more annually than the rest of the industry, but smaller credit unions aren't losing talent wars when they compete on what money can't buy. Culture, flexibility, and growth opportunitie...

Read the full shownotes and transcript on our site:  growyourcreditunion.com Want to learn more about SBS CyberSecurity and TRAC? Watch this video or visit SBSCyber.com Credit unions often wait until CEOs announce retirement to figure out compensation packages, creating situations where merger deals become the path to executive payouts instead of succession planning. The industry that preaches lon...

Read the full shownotes and transcript on our site: growyourcreditunion.com In this episode of Grow Your Credit Union, host Joshua Barclay  and co-host  Becky Reed welcome John Wilkening , EVP and Chief Banking Officer at Tech Credit Union , to explore why small credit unions are choosing extinction over growth, what the Great Recession taught leaders about managing both sides of the balance sheet...

Credit unions promote people into executive roles based on tenure and technical skills, then wonder why leadership feels like amateur hour when the stakes keep getting higher. The industry that prides itself on developing people has somehow forgotten that managing databases doesn't prepare you to manage board dynamics, and knowing compliance doesn't teach you to read the room. In this episode of G...

Head over to growyourcreditunion.com to see all of our episodes and full transcripts. How does your board member selection process compare to your hiring procedures for other positions? Many credit unions have detailed vetting for staff roles that includes background checks and multiple interviews. Could similar rigor benefit board recruitment? In this episode, hosts Joshua Barclay and Becky Reed...

Credit unions pride themselves on member service, yet they systematically withhold information about products that could save members thousands annually. In this episode, hosts Joshua Barclay and Becky Reed welcome Anand Solanki, CFO and head of product management at Citadel Credit Union, to explore why the shift from service to sales culture starts with purpose, how Silicon Valley product thinkin...