The CU2.0 Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Do you want the good news first or the bad? In this podcast we bring together three Gen Zers to tell the good, the bad, and the ugly about credit unions. The ugliest news: the woeful job credit unions have done in communicating their profound and manifold advantages. Do Gen Zs know about the free checking, the vast shared ATM network,  that CUs are non profit? Nope. There are cure...

Send us Fan Mail Quick now, how much did financial institutions collect in overdraft fees in 2017?  The answer is $34.3 billion . That's right, billion.  A lot of us are getting soaked by high bank fees and thus TrueFees, founded by Ben Premo whose intent is to shine a light on the actual fees charged by financial institutions. Premo told me that maybe one in two FIs are opaque about their fe...

Send us Fan Mail How long does it takes your credit union to respond to a mortgage application with a verdict?  Anything longer than 10 minutes just may be too long. Are you still in the game? At Filene, Erin Coleman, senior impact director, mulls just that kind of question as she hunts for ways for credit unions to stay competitive in a landscape that is ever more perilous. She also discusses the...

Send us Fan Mail Quick now, what country has the highest participation in credit unions? Say the US and you are wong. According to Mike Edwards, senior vice president for advocacy at the World Council of Credit Unions, it's Ireland, north and south, where 70% belong. In this podcast he tells why that participation is so high. He also tells why many regulatory matters in the US in fact origina...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Up in Smoke, Part 2 - more formally, Credit Unions and Cannabis, Part 2. In last week's episode, we heard from lawyers, a lobbyist and two credit union consultants in a no holds barred exploration of the potential, and pitfalls, of cannabis accounts in credit unions. Catch up with that podcast here . This week we are digging deeper in a pair of interviews. One is w...

Send us Fan Mail From the Ukraine to Ireland and Dominica, this podcast travels the globe with Mike Reuter, executive director of the Worldwide Foundation for Credit Unions, as he shares stories of the challenges faced by credit unions and also the generous willingness of other credit unions executives to help. Exhibit one may be the rebuilding of the Dominica credit union sector after that island...

Send us Fan Mail You don't want to listen to this podcast. But you need to. What banking futurist Brett King paints is a dystopian picture of financial services tomorrow where, increasingly, consumers want frictionless money transactions, they don't give a hoot about banks vs. non banks, and they have no interest in a relationship with a one stop financial services provider. Credit union...

Send us Fan Mail Consider this podcast a crash course on credit union lobbying, 2019 style. Our instructor: Patrick Conway, CEO of the Pennsylvania Credit Union Association, a very large league with upwards of 370 members. PCUA lobbies both in Harrisburg, the state capital, and in Washington, DC. A lot of what PCUA does however could be considered credit union education. For instance, PCUA has pla...

Send us Fan Mail $100 million. That's the projected three year budget for the CUNA "Open Your Eyes to a Credit Union" campaign. Teresa Freeborn, CEO of Xceed Financial Credit Union, chairs the CUNA effort which she - make no mistake - sees as crucial in the longterm survival and prosperity of credit unions. The campaigns blends research with marketing - much of it online - to reach...

Send us Fan Mail Just say no more to overdraft fees. And make this decision good for your members and also good for your credit union. You may even grab a few customers away from Chase and the other money center banks. That's the promise of fintech startup Grain Technology . In this podcast Grain co-founder and COO Carl Memnon tells about the company's proprietary algorithm that lets it...

Send us Fan Mail You want to make new account opening easy and fraudsters want to exploit that loophole to rob your credit union. That is the gist of today's podcast with Hakan Nordfjell, head of digital banking at Gemalto.  He tells about fraudster tricks and also the way financial institutions are fighting back. He also warns that all your personal information is on the dark web and ready f...

Send us Fan Mail Cornerstone Advisors' Ron Shevlin's report on "What's Going On in Banking 2019. Is the Party Over?" is out and he's in the CU2.0 Podcast to share some of his findings. Read the report here .  It's free. To compile the report Shevlin surveyed some 300+ senior executives in financial institutions - around 120 in credit unions - and they spill their...

Send us Fan Mail Say congratulations to Joe Bergeron - he's in his 40th year of service to Vermont credit unions and he presently serves as CEO of the Association of Vermont Credit Unions where he has a close up view of the issues and ideas that rock his state's 19 credit unions, which vary in size from a $1billion+ institution to tiny ones. In this podcast Bergeron also talks about the...

Send us Fan Mail Call this podcast Up In Smoke, Credit Union Style. The more formal moniker: Cannabis and Credit Unions: The Opportunities and Risks, Part 1. That’s right. There is also a Part 2 because there just is so much to report about cannabis and financial institutions. In Part 1 , you will hear from a couple lawyers, a cannabis lobbyist, a pair of credit union consultants, and more. Why th...