The CU2.0 Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Steve Winninger is the man to talk with about credit union boards and governance. A longtime credit union CEO - 20 years at Lake Trust - now a $1.6 billion institution based in Michigan - plus he also served as CEO at IBM Lexington and since retiring from Lake Trust he has put in stints as CEO at four credit unions (only one of which merged out of existence). But Steve is a rare C...

Send us Fan Mail Yet another show about AI but this conversation with Chris Cox , COO at Apiture, a North Carolina based digital banking company, covers the gamut from small, practical AI powered steps a credit union can take now to truly big ideas that just might revolutionize how we bank.  Such as? Cox tosses out this idea: what if a digital banking app could become like Chat GPT. that is, the u...

Send us Fan Mail Call this show all you never wanted to know about the fraudemic that credit unions today are fighting - but you have to know about it because knowledge is a key to beating the armies ff criminals who are besieging FIs across America. Who are they? What weapons do they have?  On the show is Rene Perez , a financial crime expert who works with Jack Henry, who tells us what the fraud...

Send us Fan Mail Can credit unions help eradicate racism in America? Renee Sattiewhite says so in this 2020 podcast that is our greatest hit #20. But ask her if there is racism in US financial institutions and the answer is yes. Renee Sattiewhite is CEO of the African American Credit Union Coalition and in this show she expresses optimism that the US can rid itself of its racist demons. The time f...

Send us Fan Mail Literally a couple days before I recorded this podcast with Siva Narendra, CEO and founder of Tyfone and now Payfinia, a story moved over the wire with this headline: Payfinia Launches CUSO with Star One Credit Union. The story added that Star One - a Silicon Valley behemoth - had invested $4.5 million in the CUSO. That money, by the way, moved in a series of $500,000 instant paym...

Send us Fan Mail AI - it’s the word on every lip in credit union land as most institutions scramble to find ways to usefully harness AI. And then there is Glia, the company known for contact center tools that are at work in many credit unions and now Glia has debuted a suite of AI powered contact management tools that are ready to use now. If you’ve been wondering when AI would get real for credit...

Send us Fan Mail Latino Community Credit Union was founded in 2000 in Durham NC when the community was rocked by a wave of robberies - even murders - of Latino workers who were paid in cash and were believed to walk around with their pockets stuffed with cash because they were unbanked. Enter John Herrera - whom you know from CU 2.0 Podcast 142 - and a handful more helpers and visionaries who foun...

Send us Fan Mail Open banking - two words that just may change your life and this change is coming at you, ready or not. In late October the CFPB finalized a rule that made open banking a must have for the nation’s biggest financial institutions by April 1 2026  - and by April 1 2030 the bigger credit unions will have to comply too. Don’t ask me to explain the choice of April 1. It’s a rather infe...

Send us Fan Mail The United States is awash in medical debt.  How much is there? Hard to say but Kaiser Family Foundation has an estimate of $220 billion and, yes, that’s billion with a b. Enter CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which believes there is a lot of double billing, inflated charges and downright illegal medical debt collection tactics.   CFPB is looking at banning reportin...

Send us Fan Mail What magic pill can help keep hundreds, indeed thousands of credit unions from vanishing over the next decade? Vim Anand, CEO of Member Support Services , says his CUSO can create operational efficiency and cost savings through economies of scale and standardization.  The focus is on backoffice technologies and, says Anand, MSS’s tools deliver 20+ % cost savings. But don’t take hi...

Send us Fan Mail What’s the credit union mission? Really? At Inclusiv CEO Cathie Mahon believes that mission is serving the underserved. That won her a place as a very early guest on the podcast. Indeed hers was episode 15. She’s still working on making that mission reality at Inclusiv. And this still is a show that explores topics that really matter. Listen up.

Send us Fan Mail Bet you don’t know what the word “hapax” means. Listen to this podcast with Kevin Green , COO of Hapax , an Ai based tool that is built around the files and date inside your credit union. As Hapax explains, “Our Enterprise Model learns your institution's unique practices, policies, and challenges to facilitate knowledge-sharing among your team. It provides a repository of spe...

Send us Fan Mail Just about every credit union wants - indeed needs - new members and that’s exactly what Union Credit focuses on by providing embedded finance tools to deliver a steady stream of new members to participating credit unions. And get this: credit unions sign month to month deals with Union Credit.  So it has to perform to keep credit unions. And a credit union can tell Union Credit h...

Send us Fan Mail The title I put on the podcast with Pete Crear was “A distinguished credit union life.” Indeed it is.  He was the first to win the lifetime achievement award from the African American Credit Union Coalition - and when they gave him the award in 2003 they decided to name it after him.   It’s an honor to have had him on the show and so it also is to proclaim this our Great Hits #17...

Send us Fan Mail The bad news is that after spending maybe a few hundred dollars to acquire a new member there’s a 50-50 chance that within a year that member will go dormant, assuming he/she actually ever showed any activity in the credit union at all. That warning comes from  Har Rai Khalsa , CEO of Miami based Swaystack and, earlier in his career, he co-founded MK Decision, a digital account op...

Send us Fan Mail On one side is an army of highly skilled criminals, all now equipped with the latest AI tools. On the other side are credit unions and other financial institutions and, face reality, credit unions have to up their game, now, to stay competitive in an AI war. On the show is Ravi Sandepudi , CEO of Effectiv , a San Francisco based fraud prevention company with deep skills in AI. Rav...

Send us Fan Mail What’s involved in implementing a digital member onboarding solution?  Probably that's a question you’ve pondered because digital onboarding is a new must have in credit union land. But how do you get there? On the show today is Todd Gunderson , CEO of Credit Union 1 , a $1.75 billion Illinois-based institution. Gunderson walks us through the steps the institution took in imp...

Send us Fan Mail Ex nihil nihil fit.   Out of nothing nothing comes. That's a building block of Western thought - and then there is Prizeout, an innovative ad tech firm that maybe proves that nihil proposition is wrong. You've heard Prizeout before. Perhaps 18 months ago, CEO David Metz was on the show with Darlene Johnson of Suncoast Credit Union. Metz is back, this time with TJ Wyman ,...

Send us Fan Mail This show was recorded on October 1. The first guest you hear is Greg Mitchell, CEO of First Tech Federal Credit Union, and you know what had happened on September 30. Just the day before this show First Tech and DCU had announced a merger of giants.   And yet here was Mitchell on a podcast with Splash Financial CEO Steven Muszynski. Right there that tells you a lot about both Mit...

Send us Fan Mail Buckle up, the ride just got a lot bumpier. The news exploded in credit union land on September 30: First Tech, the 12th largest credit union in the country with assets over $16 billion, is merging with Digital Credit Union, the 18th largest with assets over $12 billion. The resulting crosscountry credit union will have assets of $28.7 billion, making it the nation’s seventh bigge...

Send us Fan Mail Talking about money. Talking about pay. At credit unions. Now do I have your attention? On the Money Talks show today is regular guest Kirk Kordeleski who has brought along J P O’Connor , a credit union compensation analyst, who has joined PARC Street because key to architecting the right SERP retirement package for a c-suiter is pegging t to the right salary. Not all credit union...

Send us Fan Mail News flash: Every credit union does not have to use NCUA’s National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund. Repeat: does not. Alas, federally chartered credit unions have no choice but to use NCUA's insurance product. But state chartered institutions do have a choice. Meet Theresa Mason , CEO of American Share Insurance which provides primary share insurance to around 100 state ch...

Send us Fan Mail Can a credit union serve more than one employer group? You know what today's answer is of course. But to know the history you need to talk with Marc Schafer, the now retired CEO of Truliant, a Winston Salem credit union. In the mid 1990s Truliant was sued by a bankers group that claimed it was illegal for a credit union to serve more than one SEG.  The bankers won. The story...

Send us Fan Mail The Fed just cut its interest rate by half a point and Happy Money CEO Matt Potere is on the show to tell what a credit union needs to do to optimize its performance in an environment of lower interest rates - and those  cuts will impact everything from home mortgages to car loans to the personal loans that are Happy Money’s mainstay.  The show starts on a different topic however....

Send us Fan Mail The press release headline grabbed my attention: “SELCO Community Credit Union Awards $200,000 Grant to SquareOne Villages for the Development of the Rosa Village Co-Op in Eugene.” SELCO has been on the show before , with Olivia Sorensen,Senior Community Development Specialist for SELCO, talking about SELCO Steps Up, where the credit union thoughtfully seeks to do good in its comm...