The CU2.0 Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to CU 2.0 Podcast Greatest Hits #26 and on the podcast is  Kirk Kordeleski, onetime CEO at Bethpage Federal Credit Union, and one of the industry’s most perceptive thinkers. In this show - from November 2022 -- Kordeleski muses on what he calls the five generations of credit union CEOS and he also offers tips on surviving a recession, advice that very well may be timely.

Send us Fan Mail Credit unions, most of them, want more small business loans on their books but few credit unions know how to speedily and profitably process small business loan applications and consequently most are lagging when it comes to booking business. Meet Alex McLeod, a serial startup entrepreneur who now is tackling thee small business loan market with AI powered software that her compan...

Send us Fan Mail On the show today is Peter Rice, CEO of Hanscom Federal Credit Union , a  $1.9 billion institution headquartered in Boston that took flight in 1951 at Hanscom Air Force Base.   Rice is a repeat guest.  His first appearance came in 2021 when he was Chief Banking Officer at Workers Bank.  That episode has been reposted as Greatest Hit #25 .   On this show Rice’s mind roams across th...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the cU 2.0 Podcast Greatest Hits #25.  This show dates back to August 2021 and it aired as episode 162. The guest: Peter Rice, now CEO of Hanscom Federal Credit Union, and then he was Chief Banking Officer at Workers Credit Union.  He came on the show to talk about a new, dazzling branch concept.   You’ll hear how Rice’s mind works in the show. And a few days after the...

Send us Fan Mail I’d expected this to be an AI free show but, let’s face it, that just isn’t likely in 2025 but the good news is that in the show Pete Major ,  vice president of fintech services at CUSO MDT , offers concrete AI use cases at work in MDT and he also, importantly, offers cautions about security and the leading AI tools. In a rush to stay abreast of the fast moving AI universe are som...

Send us Fan Mail Quick now, what is NACUSO ? Of course that’s the National Association of Credit Union Service Organizations  - and CUSOs just may be the credit union secret power.   On the show today is Seth Brickman, former CEO of QCash and now president of Ranqx , a powerful tool that can gather the necessary financial info from a wouldbe borrower, analyze and issue a verdict on a business loan...

Send us Fan Mail Hopeful. Determined. In a conversation with Renee Sattiewhite , the CEO of the African American Credit Union Coalition, she came across as both hopeful and determined.  And she believes there still is work to be done and she definitely is not giving up.   Definitely she knows the landscape in today’s Washington DC is dramatically different but she does not see that as a call for w...

Send us Fan Mail On today’s show, Mac Thompson , ceo  and founder of White Clay - a company focused on helping financial institution use data to build better, more profitable member and customer relationships, and he comes bearing a bitter pill for CU execs to swallow. According to a recent Harris Poll sponsored by White Clay, “Roughly two-thirds of FI users (68%) do not feel truly known by their...

Send us Fan Mail What’s next for WOCCU? Is there a next? The trigger for the question is a notification from the U.S. State Department that paused all funding for USAID programs for 90 days.  There’s no promise that funding would resume after 90 days. Caught in this are three major WOCCU projects - in Ukraine, Ecuador and Peru, and sub-Saharan Africa. That background is why we knew we had to sched...

Send us Fan Mail About 4.7 million homes sold in the US in 2024. Does that sound like a dead market? On the show today is James White of Total Expert which provides tools to help credit unions more efficiently close mortgages. What Total Expert offers is a  powerful CRM for loan officers that automates much of the process. Also on the show is Zakary Short, vice president of mortgage production at...

Send us Fan Mail This is the weather report from GAC, last week’s credit union confab in Washington DC.  On the show to report on key developments is Sarah Snell Cooke, former editor in chief and publisher of Credit Union Times and now a consultant to credit unions' business partners. The big question at GAC was: is this really the end of the credit union federal tax exemption? Also on the ag...

Send us Fan Mail Can a $350 million credit union play in the big leagues? Don’t tell Christine Blake, CEO of $350 million Cardinal Credit Union in Ohio, that she can’t.  Because she is.   A few years ago Cardinal signed on as the official credit union of the Cleveland Browns, one of the historic football teams dating back to 1946.  Yes, the Browns have had a few rough years recently but this is a...

Send us Fan Mail Cliff Rosenthal literally wrote the book on CDFIs, community development financial institutions.  Hear his story in this podcast that dates back to 2019, episode 37 in the vaults.   Rosenthal was on the show last year - episode 311 - talking about a new book he co-authored with Michael McCray entitled Community Capital. It’s part Rosenthal autobiography, part the sgtory of the dea...

Send us Fan Mail Here’s the money question  for you to ponder: : should you close that branch on  Third Street and open a new branch in a neighboring town? Keep in mind that the ballpark cost of opening a new branch is $2.5 million. As for costs in a branch closure there always are some and there also may be remember losses.  How to do the math? Meet Steven Reider, president of Bancography - that’...

Send us Fan Mail Call this your must listen podcastg before GAC. Because in this show you will be hearing explicit advice about your CAC 2025 to do. Here's what is at stake: the credit union tax exmption on the future of NCUA. Will credit unions lose their federal tax exemption?  Will NCUA be shuffled into a couple desks in the basement of the Treasury Department? Issues of monumental importa...

Send us Fan Mail If I told you I have a podcast where a credit union executive tells you about high rates on CDs, free checking, and super cheap new car loans, how quickly would you turn the dial and give a listen to Joe Rogan? Right, you know the answer. So I will tell you what I really have is a fascinating podcast with Josh Rodriguez at West Community Credit Union in Missouri, an institution ap...

Send us Fan Mail Keith Leggett is a name that used to provoke cursing by usually mild mannered credit union executives - and so here he is again in a CU 2.0 Golden Oldies podcast. Leggett has retired from the American Bankers Association, where he was chief economist, and he also has put -30- on his Credit Union Watch blog but this show from the archives is well worth a listen in 2025 because it f...

Send us Fan Mail Could this really be the end? For going on 20 years I have heard screams - usually emanating from one trade group - that the credit union tax exemption was in peril.  I thought that was a terrific membership renewal hook but didn’t seen any likelihood of passage. This year is different. This year the threat is real.  On the show is Jason Stverak, , chief advocacy officer at DCUC,...

Send us Fan Mail Here’s the question: Is the First Tech - DCU merger of behemoths a sign of mergers to come or it is an outlier, a one-off deal that arose because of unique circumstances and histories?? Kirk Kordeleski, onetime CEO at Bethpage, itself a member of the behemoth club, and now a SERP expert  with PARC Street Partners , and he comes with strong opinions abut credit union mergers. But t...

Send us Fan Mail Live from Munich Germany on today’s podcast is Dr. Marlene Wolfgruber, AI Strategy Lead at global automation company ABBYY and, between her advanced education at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, a school Google’s AI tool Gemini says is one of Germany’s best and a leading university in global rankings., and her work for  ABBY, a global technology company specializing in inte...

Send us Fan Mail If I say a temp worker, probably you think of a fill in receptionist and that’s true as far as it goes.  But talk with O2 Consulting Group and it’s a plunge into a whole new world - especially impacting smaller credit unions, ones under perhaps $500 million in assets.  Where exactly does that CU find the talent to, say, implement an AI program? Just maybe a fractional e CTO - shar...

Send us Fan Mail Here’s the bad news: AI today is more of a promise than a working reality at most credit unions, says Al;ex JImenzez , a consultant with Backbase , which focus on helping FIs achieve more and better consumer engagement. But then Jimenez has plenty of very good news for credit unions - and, he insists, their size gives them exceptional advantages when competing with far less nimble...

Send us Fan Mail When Bert Hash, Jr. took over as CEO of MECU in 1996 it was a $400 million institution with one branch that served municipal employees of Baltimore. In this podcast he tells about the institution he took charge of. It had exactly zero ATMs.  It did not dispense cash to members - if a member wanted a withdrawal, they were issued a check and most went across the street to a bank to...

Send us Fan Mail Beware the shiny tech objects. On the show today is Tennessee Credit Union League's CRO David Griffiths who says a huge problem many of the league’s credit unions wrestle with is fragmented technology adoption - how do the many tech pieces work together? Or more bluntly: can they work together at all? Old cores are a real problem for many Tennessee credit unions.  So is the c...

Send us Fan Mail Thank you for joining our podcast with Doug Brown of Candescent. That’s no mistake.  I have talked with Doug many times but always before he has worn an NCR hat where he was president of digital banking.  Here’s one show , another , and one more .  .  Looking in my archive I find interview notes with him dating back a dozen years when he was at FIS. But now, to quote the bard Jame...