The CU2.0 Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Picture this: a member comes into your office and says he wants a million dollar loan and he has collateral. What kind of collateral? The head of a tyrannosaurus rex , a huge dinosaur and, yes, there is a market for t rex bones What do you do? The temptation is to say get the hell outta here. But just maybe the smarter, very 21 century solution is to call UPTIQ where the mantra is...

Send us Fan Mail Call this show beyond credit scores. The reality is that in 2023 credit scores are as common as nitrogen on our planet.  There is nothing special about offering access to credit scores to members because, well, they can get them anywhere. Personally I can think of a half dozen different accounts of mine that provide free access to credit scores. Probably I have more that I have si...

Send us Fan Mail This is the trade-up home buyer’s dilemma: in most cases, until his/her existing home actually sells, he cannot truly close on a new home. Home sellers are increasingly wary of the standard contingency clause that gives a buyer an out if his/.her present home doesn’t sell. Those sellers like all cash buyers. What’s a trade up home buyer to do? Enter Calque , the trade-in mortgage...

Send us Fan Mail Just when you thought Sam Bankman-Fried had signaled the end of crypto, there just may be cause for optimism about the future of crypto and blockchain. Think about this: it was just maybe a dozen years ago and optimism was wide and deep about both crypto currencies and blockchain.  What has happened to decimate that optimism? Lots of theft and money - in the billions of dollars -...

Send us Fan Mail Meet your new Best Friend: Rocket Mortgage. Is that boos and curses I am hearing? Understand: I know many in the credit union universe view Rocket Mortgage as the enemy.  That opinion even has been voiced on past episodes of this podcast. Understandably, too, Rocket Mortgage - the leading US mortgage originator - has enemies.  Leaders usually do. But in this show, you will hear Sa...

Send us Fan Mail Listeners to this podcast know that Kirk Kordeleski, onetime CEO at Bethpage Federal Credit Union, is a busy guy. That became vivid one recent day when I signed into LinkedIn and saw a Kordeleski post where he announced he had become a partner in a new company formed to create SERPs for credit union executives: PARC Street Partners, where PARC stands for Pay Attract Retain Compens...

Send us Fan Mail That whistle you hear - the AI train is leaving the station and forward thinking credit unions are hopping aboard. Here’s the reality: the big banks are all in with AI. So are the big fintechs.   Where does that leave you? Behind is where you are likely to be unless you begin to grapple with AI and its potential to transform financial services and your institution. The analogy is...

Send us Fan Mail Whither credit union lending - or put more bluntly, when will today’s liquidity issues and their constraint on lending lessen? That’s a huge topic - liquidity is a key concern at just about every credit union - and that’s why we brought together three experts with different takes on lending and liquidity. There's Mac Thompson, founder and president of White Clay and a data an...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever spent two days at an industry meeting and on your flight home you found yourself wondering, why did I go there? Did I get a thing useful out of this? Join the club.  Events regret is widespread. And then there is Kirk Kordeleski , former CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union which he grew into a colossus and now he's an executive with O.M. Financial, where he hel...

Send us Fan Mail BNPL.  When we talked with Bryce Deeney, CEO of Equipifi, about his BNPL focused startup in December 2021 BNPL probably sounded to most listeners like a new alphabet soup and who really cared about it? Flashforward and quite possibly you personally have used BNPL. If you haven’t a relative or friend definitely has.  Companies like Aftrpay, Klarna and Affirm are major fintech playe...

Send us Fan Mail Fednow just may change your credit union’s entire approach to how money moves in and out.   That is fact and the fact is all the realer because Fednow actually launched in July. Sure, real time money movement has been talked about for at least a decade bur that was just talk, now it is real. Could you ignore it for the time being? That would be to your detriment, warns this podcas...

Send us Fan Mail What’s in your fintech blueprint? Wait, you say, what’s a fintech blueprint? Good question and if you didn’t ask it probably you should have because few credit unions have current blueprints or even old, dusty ones. On that note, how often should you update a fintech blueprint? On the show today is  Prakash Natarajan, managing director for payments strategy for SRM and he says eve...

Send us Fan Mail How many zombie members are on your credit union’s books? You know who we mean - they sometimes also are called ghost members. They have a few bucks parked in the institution from back when they became members but, nowadays, they are mainly invisible. And worse: the credit union often charges no monthly fee but it may pay a monthly fee for that member’s access to online banking ev...

Send us Fan Mail Consider this show all you want to know about credit union boards and gender and ethnic composition. Know this: you probably will be surprised, and disappointed, about one statistic you will hear. Also know: the source for this show is a 69 page report, Credit Union Boards of Directors: Board Size, Gender, Race and Institutional Performance, 2012-2021 . Download the report, it’s f...

Send us Fan Mail What’s in a name? Shakespeare asked that question but right now lots of credit union leaders are doing likewise.  For good reason. The institution’s name may no longer suit the present realities as SEGs fade away, geographic bases shift and sometimes, just maybe, there’s a sense that a more timely name might well have greater appeal for millennials and Gen Z who are the future. En...

Send us Fan Mail Ask Kirk Kordesleski, onetime CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union where he pursued an extremely aggressive business strategy designed to double the size of the institution in five years, to mame a key challenge facing credit unions right now and he is blunt: a new generation of leaders has to be prepared and prepped and there is no time for delay. The Baby Boomer generation of cr...

Send us Fan Mail Bill Partin , the recently retired CEO at nearly $2 billion Sharonview Federal Credit Union in the Carolinas,  went there after a long career at multiple Southern California credit unions where he ended in the c-suite at Partners , the Burbank based  institution created to serve Walt Disney Company employees. At Partners he worked for then CEO John Janclaes and one day Partin aske...

Send us Fan Mail CDA - three letters but, ask Matthew Butler, and he will tell you this is a potential huge win for credit unions and their communities., Butler is founder of Elite Capital where a chief product offering is the CDA - that’s a charitable donation account and, no, I hadn’t heard of it either. Just a handful of credit unions currently use a charitable donation account and Butler is he...

Send us Fan Mail $200 billion. That is how much money is in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and one credit union voice that has been loud in seeking a share is Inclusiv, the trade group for community development credit unions that now has 470 members. Just why is Inclusiv involved in this? Exactly that question is why we invited Inclusiv CEO Cathie Mahon on the show.  She’s a past guest - in 201...

Send us Fan Mail So you want to be a credit union CEO? This is your must listen podcast. In the show, Kirk Kordeleski, onetime CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union which he grew to be among the nation’s biggest, tells his path from starting as a part time teller at Bank-Fund Staff Credit Union in Washington DC (created for employees of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) to rising...

Send us Fan Mail True or false: a credit union with assets well under $200 million offers crypto currencies to members. Meet Becky Reed , the now former CEO of Lone Star Credit Union - assets now around $165 million - and, yep, Lone Star offers crypto to its members.  In the show Reed tells why Lone Star made this decision - mainly because it saw a lot of member assets exiting the credit union to...

Send us Fan Mail AI - you know it’s the big new thing that has won all the buzz in today’s tech world. Does it deserve it? Hear a loud “yes” in this podcast with Saroop Bharwani , CEO of Senso.ai and a co-creator of CU Copilot , a consortium of AI early adopter credit unions that are joining together to learn how to put AI to transformative uses in their institutions. A half dozen credit unions al...

Send us Fan Mail AI - it’s the word of the moment. And many credit unions are rushing to familiarize themselves, even to implement pilots internally. Stop right there. Before taking actions, listen to this podcast with Kevin Farley , vice president of experience and engagement at United Heritage Credit Union in Austin TX Farley popped up on my radar screen with a down to earth, practical article o...

Send us Fan Mail There are three mind blowing facts in this podcast. Number one: credit unions currently have a greater appetite for offering crypto currencies to members than do banks to their customers.  The source of that  is Kian Sarreshteh , CEO of CryptoFi , a crypto as a service company formed to help traditional FIs to offer digital assets.  His proof: CryptoFi has pivoted in the last year...

Send us Fan Mail Real time. Dynamic. Personalized. Accept this: what worked in combatting fraudsters 10 years ago is about as useful today as a 10 year old PC or cellphone. Accept this too: it’s war on with fraudsters and smart financial institutions understand that very likely the criminals know a lot about the FI’s weaponry. How to combat these criminals? On the show today is Ravi Sandepudi , CE...