The CU2.0 Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast Greatest Hits Show, episode the second. This show is with Peter Duffy on credit union - credit union mergers, show #274. Consider it a bookend with the first Great Hits show with Michael Bell on credit union - bank mergers. The reality is that mergers just are in the 2024 air as more credit unions face up to the reality that they need to bulk up to co...

Send us Fan Mail There’s no charge to you or to your member - and yet both will get money out of the deal. In one case a member bought a $1000 CVS gift card and got an extra $80 in cash back.  How cool is that. Of course you want to hear more. On the show today is David Metz, CEO of Prizeout and a past guest on the show .  (Stay tuned: that episode will soon post as Greatest Hits # 3.) Today Metz...

Send us Fan Mail Hero or villain? It’s your choice.  When a member writes a check, or swipes a debit card, but lacks the funds for the transaction a credit union has a choice: it can play the part of the villain and slap a big fee on the member or the credit union could use the patented toolset from DoubleCheck to resolve the situation in ways that can benefit both the member and the credit union....

Send us Fan Mail What’s your mother’s maiden name? Your first car’s make? Your zip code? Face facts: it’s tedious at best to positively identify members who contact the credit union and, worse, scammers know the protocols and in some cases have masqueraded as credit union employees and gotten the answers from members so they could impersonate them. Nobody like the way this is now done at most FIs,...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast Greatest Hits show. There are over 300 shows in the library and yet a reality in the podcast business is that few of us ever even look at more than maybe the half dozen most recent shows. That’s why we are going to resurface some of the best and most popular shows as Greatest Hits, The first Greatest Hit - originally #277 - is with Michael Bell, the a...

Send us Fan Mail Credit unions and their members are givers - that’s just a fact but that fact also is central to the self identity of credit unions and how they see their role in their communities. Enter Givio , an entirely different kind of fintech.  Over the years of this show we’ve poked into all manner of fintechs but Givio is different, it’s something we haven’t seen before and it is excitin...

Send us Fan Mail Exactly what is the path to becoming a credit union CEO?  In this show, Kirk Kordeleski, onetime CEO at Bethpage Federal Credit Union, tells the route to take to get there - and it’s a must listen for the ambitious. Kordeleski also talks about the stresses that come with the job and asks if you are really ready for them.  Be honest. There’s no shame in stopping the climb at CFO or...

Send us Fan Mail Three words: social finance software. By the end of this podcast you will know what the phrase means and why an embrace of social fiance software just might be a brilliant move on the part of many credit unions, a move that could benefit the communities that are served and also the credit unions who grasp that social finance software just might be a path to winning many more young...

Send us Fan Mail Meet the next generation of teen banking featuring a hefty dose of parental involvement.  That’s the gist of Boucoup by BankingON and you know BankingON . It’s the team behind the technology that powers Bank Dora , the innovative mobile banking app . About now your hand is probably waving because you want to point out a spelling error. Put the hand down. Boucoup looks like a spell...

Send us Fan Mail Catastrophic flooding and extreme weather hit Vermont in 2023 and this has caused an estimated $45 million in losses to farmers - and you know Vermont farmers from Ben & Jerry’s to Cabot Cheese. Farms are crucial to Vermont, economically but also in its self identity. But now some 350 farm families face severe economic hardship as they seek to recover from the flooding and sev...

Send us Fan Mail You want more young members. That’s because credit unions have an aging problem - the average member age is mid 50s and yet the median age in the US is late 30s. Worse, as people enter their late 50s most have diminished interest in loans but they have high interest in big returns on their ready cash. Which brings us back to the young who of course often have an appetite for borro...

Send us Fan Mail Your credit union has the data. The insight you need is in there…some place. Enter Cinchy , which promises to deliver new ways to get more collaborative insights out of data.  That will also ease the pains - and costs - of data integration projects that often give credit unions more frustration than satisfaction. Sounds too good to be true?  The skepticism is understandable but on...

Send us Fan Mail Cyber threats are just about everywhere nowadays. That is fact and also facts are that credit unions, as a rule, strive for a high level of defense - and yet many still get hacked. Explaining all this on the show today is Chris Clements , vice president of solutions architecture at CISO Global . The show starts with Clements revealing he spent his morning hacking into a credit uni...

Send us Fan Mail What’s the anxiety level inside the credit union board room? If you’re like me you probably have few conversations with credit union board members and that’s why you want to tune into what Kirk Kordeleski, former CEO at Bethpage Federal Credit Union and now a go-to retirement planning expert for credit union c-suiters, tells us about what’s happening at the board level. Kordeleski...

Send us Fan Mail Treasury Management. Quick now, what does it mean at a financial institution? The honest answer at most credit unions is dunno.  That’s because few have any meaningful treasury management capabilities. The big banks do.  And they are scooping up businesses and high net worth individuals who want the benefits treasury management delivers. Which are?   In a sentence treasury managem...

Send us Fan Mail Two words tell the focus of AVANA CUSO - commercial lending. You probably like the sound of that and that’s because just about all credit unions want to do more commercial lending but, as many have discovered, this is a niche that demands focused skills to succeed.   AVANA CUSO has been at this work for decades and it works with hundreds of credit unions who are able to participat...

Send us Fan Mail The word in credit union csuites is AI. Artificial intelligence. Some cheer its coming, some sink into fear but - here’s the fact - AI is coming. And Saroop Bharwani is back on the show to provide us with a wrap up of AI’s status in credit unions as we end 2023 and some forecasts about AI at credit unions in 2024. Saroop’s big message: the AI train is leaving the station. Hop aboa...

Send us Fan Mail Rebecca Bacon has loan paper to sell. Billions of dollars of paper. That’s because she works with Upgrade, a San Francisco based fintech that issues credit cards, makes auto loans, writes personal loans and then it sells the paper to some 200 financial institutions , mainly credit unions says Bacon . Most are big - she names Pen Fed as a buyer - but Upgrade also works for small in...

Send us Fan Mail There is a lot of communication during the process of approving and funding a mortgage.  The member has questions and needs to stay informed. Enter Total Expert’s James White who tells about the company’s technology that automates a lot of the process - which of course frees up a credit union’s staff to do other work. But don’t just take his word. Also on the show is Shelby Parkhi...

Send us Fan Mail This year there will be over 100 credit union mergers with other credit unions. But there also will be mergers of credit unions with community banks and now is the time to start learning about what’s involved and what the payoffs are. One big reason: probably half of the nation’s community banks are available to buy.  Another reason: for many reasons, many credit unions are hangin...

Send us Fan Mail The nation is drowning in medical debt.  According to KFF (nee the Kaiser Family Foundation) some 100 million of us have medical debt - 41% of adults.  About one in five do not expect to ever be able to pay their debt off, according to KFF .   Enter Epic River , a Fort Collins CO based lending as a service provider, which came up with a startling idea.  What if it took all of, say...

Send us Fan Mail Is your credit union on social media?   Actually let me ask the real question: are you getting results?  Such as? New members. New loans.  Activities that boost your bottomline. The reality is that yesteryear’s advertising/marketing media - local TV news, local radio, local newspapers and the standard youth sports sponsorships - are artifacts of a past marketing model.  Today the...

Send us Fan Mail The transition from OM To PARC Street Partners continues smoothly, says Kirk Kordeleski who explained that the group inside OM that had been focused on creating SERPs for senior credit union executives have all moved to PARC Street. Kordeleski’s message: there have been no disruptions in service. Not everybody in credit unions has gotten the message however so Kordeleski is active...

Send us Fan Mail Sacred cows make the best burgers.  It was some 25 years ago when I first heard speaker and consultant Robert Kriegel throw out that phrase and he even titled a book with it. It’s a good read and still in print. Every CU c suiter should read it. That’s because we have entered an era where what worked yesterday…doesn’t. Survival is the issue. In today’s podcast Peter Duffy , a cred...

Send us Fan Mail The headline on the CUTimes article by David Jones tells you why you want to listen to this podcast: Invest in PESO to Build a World-Class Credit Union Marketing Strategy . Jones is an EVP at the William Mills Agency in Atlanta and their trade is public relations which, increasingly, follows a PESO model. What’s that? PESO is a formula crafted by Gini Dietrich and it refers to Pai...