The CU2.0 Podcast

Send us Fan Mail How could we build a lending tool that anybody could use? That is the driving thought that led Sherif Hassan to form fintech Capiform and the timing could not be better. That's because, with the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing recession, suddenly credit unions are awash with savings deposits (as investors flee equity markets) and they also see a rush of loan applicants, for...

Send us Fan Mail Bill Kennedy has spent a credit union career moving from institution to institution. He has worked at 11 - "6 or 7 were turnarounds, 1 was a startup," said Kennedy . Often he's been CFO, and he has also served as CEO. He's seen a lot in his years at and near the top. Know this about this podcast: Kennedy speaks his mind and he doesn't soften his opinions....

Send us Fan Mail From the future of branches (maybe brighter than you fear) to the profound impacts Covid-19 may have on your credit union, this conversation with longtime banking analyst Bob Meara, now a senior analyst with consulting firm Celent, will get you thinking. For starters, accept that very probably Covid-19 will work lasting changes on how your credit union does business - and very pro...

Send us Fan Mail Bob Fisher, recently retired longtime CEO of $2.8 billion Grow Credit Union in Tampa, opens this podcast by relating a call he had a few weeks ago with the present CEO.  Bob said he told him, "I'm calling you with glee. I am so glad I am not in your chair now" and that's because of coronavirus, the global recession, and the upheaval that has remade the world. A...

Send us Fan Mail You have never heard a CU2.0 Podcast like this one.  This is a podcast where sacred cows are roasted on an open spit, criticisms are hurled at regulators, huge questions are raised about the wisdom of credit unions emulating bankers, and then there is the giant question about the industry's future. Welcome to the CU2.0 Podcast. This is your host, Robert McGarvey.  Today'...

Send us Fan Mail Do what you do best and let us do the rest. That's the one sentence pitch for Exclamation Services, a Wisconsin CUSO that sees its mission as helping smaller credit unions - under $500 million in assets - thrive. Every year hundreds of credit unions, mainly small, vanish - typically in mergers. But what if those credit unions could hire a la carte services such as marketing,...

Send us Fan Mail Shane Butcher is a security guru at CUSO Ongoing Operations and lately has been busy helping numerous credit unions safely transition their employees to working from home. The good news: credit unions that approach this methodically, carefully will probably be able to mitigate risks. The bad news: credit unions that rush into this, haphazardly, with inadequate employee training ma...

Send us Fan Mail Suddenly credit unions across the nation are ordering employees home, as part of the response to the coronavirus pandemic.  And that is triggering a tidal wave of worries about the possible cyber insecurities that will result as newly empowered employees log into the credit union networks. Hitherto, at many credit unions, the workers who had home access to the network were mainly...

Send us Fan Mail Who will win: community banks or credit unions? War on. A keen observer is Ron Shevlin, diretor of research at Cornerstone Advisors and author of a new report, What's Going on in Banking 2020 .  It's a data rich report. Download it, read it. Shevlin was an early guest on the CU2.0 Podcast - Episode 21 - and he's back in this wide ranging conversation about credit un...

Send us Fan Mail Talking About the Real Credit Union Mission with Bill Bynum, CEO of Hope CU By Robert McGarvey Hope. That one word powerfully sums up the mission of Hope Credit Union, a Mississippi delta based community development credit union with more than $280 million in assets.  And Hope is bringing financial hope to people across the deep south who may not have had a lot of that. How does H...

Send us Fan Mail Does your credit union have a future? There's the blunt question.   Welcome to the CU2.0 Podcast with your host Robert McGarvey. Today's guest Jon Ogden, head of strategic content at digital firm MX which has recently released two provocative reports, The Ultimate Guide to the Future of Banking and the Ultimate Guide to Digital Transformation . Read them, they are free....

Send us Fan Mail When a credit union buys a community bank is that dancing with the devil? Welcome to the CU2.0 podcast with your host Robert McGarvey. Today's guest Keith Leggett, now retired Chief Economist with the American Bankers Association who still actively writes his blog, Credit Union Watch. The topic of the talk: bank - credit union mergers. Some banking experts are up in arms abou...

Send us Fan Mail They just don't talk well together. That's the surprising conclusion in a report entitled "Surprising Disconnect Over Compliance and Secure Web Use at Financial Firms," research sponsored by IT security company Authentic8. (Download the report here .) Inside many banks and credit unions IT, compliance, and legal just don't talk the same language and often...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Up in Smoke, Part 4 - credit unions and weed. Buckle up. Dan Mayfield, public affairs director at LeveragePoint , a strategic communications firm in Albuquerque NM, will be our guide in this podcast to the cannabis business in New Mexico.   Cash, public safety, and a $130 million dollar annual business take. That's legal marijuana in New Mexico -- and right now cre...

Send us Fan Mail Toke up - the CU2.0 Podcast is back with another look at cannabis and credit unions, a topic we last looked at a year ago in a two part podcast. Part 1 here , Part 2 here .  Welcome to Part 3, 2020 edition of Up in Smoke, credit union style. This is your host Robert McGarvey Today's guest Paul Stull CEO of the Credit Union Association of New Mexico , which is sponsoring the C...

Send us Fan Mail Want to grow your member base? Want to target particular kinds of members? Content is your friend, says Shondell Varcianna, a financial services veteran who nowadays focuses on providing select financial institutions with finely targeted digital content - blog posts - for distribution via the credit union website, also social media. Her driving point: content works when it is writ...

Send us Fan Mail It just may be topic one in credit union c suites - how do we make more profitable loans? Matt Johnner of BankLabs - a developer of cloud based technology solutions for financial institutions - has a suggestion: Go after lending to two of the country's biggest industrial segments, agriculture and construction. And fast track this by using your present member base to segue int...

Send us Fan Mail Passwords are broken. You know that.  But do you know call centers are heading that way? Call centers are under attack by criminals. Smart criminals. And they are targeting credit unions. Credit unions are responding by asking more members ever harder questions. Just one problem. As the questions get more obscure - what was the make of the second car you owned - more members give...

Send us Fan Mail Every day people - maybe thousands of them - are turned away by financial institutions, credit unions included.  These people, by necessity, utilize the periphery of financial services such as payday lenders and bill pay via pricey money orders. It's expensive to be poor. Wouldn't it be nice if credit unions could do more to help these people get back on a healthy financ...

Send us Fan Mail Joseph Cooper calls it "the justice gap" and what he is pinpointing is the avalanche of unfiled lawsuits and the unpursued legal matters that the middle class often just lets go untended. The rich pay lawyers. The poor, in many cases, can access free legal assistance.  The middle class is out in the cold. Enter Cooper's Justice for Me , where he is creating a system...

Send us Fan Mail The tagline of the website Edmit says a lot: Treat college like an investment. Four years at Arizona State - tuition, room, board - will run over $110,000.   Four years at MIT will run over $300,000. Big money is at stake and this is why so many students graduate with immense debt loads. The average approaches $40,000. That's a lot of dough and it's a huge burden. Enter...

Send us Fan Mail If Kasasa were a bank branch network, it would be the nation’s fourth largest and it says that some time this year it will overtake Bank of America and be the 3rd biggest. Surprised? You bet.  Probably you know that Kasasa has been building up its customer base for digital banking products - checking in particular - but now it is big enough where it's tooting its horn. This&q...

Send us Fan Mail What do you think when you get an alert from your credit union offering you a 2.9% car loan - and you already have a 1.9% car loan that you got two years ago from the same institution? Duh, right? Lou Grilli, an executive at payments CUSO Trellance, thinks a lot about exactly those kinds of questions and he believes that for credit unions the solution will come through smarter, fa...

Send us Fan Mail Quick now, how long have passwords been around? How many credit union members want never to use one again? What are the three must have biometrics modalities? When will biometrics effectively supplant passwords in financial services? Flashback time: when did Apple introduce Touch ID, a tool that thrust biometrics into everyday use for tens of millions of consumers? Consider the ab...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to AI, Part 1 in the CU2.0 Podcast series.  Next week we'll post AI, Part 2, an exploration of voice and AI. This week looks at a company focused on text and AI. Both are products of the DCU Fintech Innovation Lab in Boston - podcast about that here . Either way, great stuff is happening that you need to know about to stay current. Why? It's because a lot of cred...