The CU2.0 Podcast
This podcast explores contemporary, critical thinking and issues impacting the nation's credit unions. What do they need to be doing to not just survive but prosper?
Episodes
Go back to when I started to report on credit unions and there were over 8000 credit unions. Now there are 4370.
In 2020 there were 5099 credit unions. Just in five years the count is down by 700+.
The math going forward is gloomy.
That’s why I smiled when I saw Jason Stverak’s CU Insight piece on Why small credit unions matter and how we can help them thrive.
Jason is chief advocacy officer at DC...
Big data vs. AI.
Is this a war inside the walls of credit unions or can the two flourish in harmony?
On the show are Anne Legg, founder and CEO of Thrive 3.0, where the mantra is leveraging data to better members’ lives, and Saroop Bharwani, co-founder and CEO of Senso, where he has been bringing AI to credit unions for several years.
What you’ll hear in this episode is that indeed big data and AI can - sh...
You have a brand.
Know it or not, like it or not, you do.
And on the show today is Laura Beauparlant, a Canada based keynote speaker and consultant who helps clients know and polish their personal brand.
What’s your brand on social media? In meetings? At conferences? Others sense your brand and that means it’s important for you to buff your brand until it shows you off in your best light.
In the show ...
About 45 credit unions are customers of JUDI.AI and they are drawn by the company’s simple promise: Eliminate friction in business lending.
There is money to be made serving small businesses and JUDI.AI has the formula, says Gord Baizley, the company’s CEO.
A key is automating a lot of the process and that’s JUDI.AI’s business.
Here’s why the company exists: “Small businesses are the backbone of our econ...
“Prepare: AI is the new CU crisis super villain.” That’s the title of a recent CUInsight story authored by Casey Boggs, founder of Reputation US, an d of course we had to get him on this podcast.
Understand, I am a strong supporter of AI in general and AI in particular inside credit unions. This is a life and death matter.
Yet there is a possible downside to AI and we already know that the main AI tools have...
Exactly what is Room (39)a?
There’s one at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center but today we are talking about the Room (39)a at CFCU, Community Financial Credit Union in Michigan, where past CU 2.0 Podcast guest Tansley Stearns serves as CEO and she has launched this Room (39)a as a CUSO that will offer subscriptions to its research.
As for what it does, CFCU’s Room (39)a describes itself this way: “a place where poss...
Three years ago Tropical Financial Credit Union, a $1 billion south Florida institution, signed on as a sponsor of the Florida Panthers and magic happened because the Panthers - in the National Hockey League - won the Stanley Cup in 2024 and won again in 2025. That’s the equivalent of winning the World Series in baseball or the Super Bowl in football and, definitely, the Panthers now are the darlings of south Florida ...
Back on the show today after a hiatus is Kirk Kordeleski, onetime CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union and now a partner in Parc Street Partners where he focuses on credit union executive retirement plans.
Kordeleski has been on the show many times but he always is welcomed back because he has deep insight into what it’s like to be a credit union CEO and also into how to compensate those CEOs appropriately. Here’...
Tansley Stearns had been working in a credit union for maybe five years when a big idea grabbed her: she decided she wanted to be a CEO of a credit union.
For a young woman who had grown up on a farm in southern Michigan that was a very big idea.
Three years ago she made it happen, when she was named CEO at Community Financial Credit Union, a Plymouth MI headquartered institution.
How is she liking the jo...
Whew, credit unions dodged the threat of loss of their tax exemption - but don’t think all is smooth sailing for credit unions in today’s turbulent Washington DC. Lots is happening that may impact credit unions, large and small.
On the show is repeat guest Elizabeth Eurgubian, a lobbyist - with the Defence Credit Union Council among her clients - who also has served as NCUA Director of the Office of External Affa...
You might know it as the dismal science, but a conversation with Bill Handel, Chief Economist of Raddon, a Fiserv company, is anything but dismal. It in fact is an enlightening romp through the complexities and confusions of today’s global economy.
In the show Handel makes a prediction about the future of interest rates - and, no, don’t expect an imminent return of 4% 30 year fixed rate mortgages.
He also t...
I am not going to explain to you in any detail what TrustGrid does and that is because in the show Joe Gleinsner, a co-founder of the Austin TX company, does a much better job of explaining than I could.
But here’s the fact: TrustGrid’s tools - which enable secure connections of fintech apps with banking systems - are on the job at a couple thousand US credit unions, says Gleinser.
Why haven’t you heard of i...
Now for a feel good show.
Lee Silber has put together a book, The Credit Union Way, that he says is inspired by the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and right away that tells you this is a feel good book.
How did it come together? On the show Silber tells how he put together the stories - each of which relates a special credit union moment.
In the episode Silber reads a chapter from the book - entitled Fr...
AI - is it real or a mirage?
What is certain is that today AI is on the lips on just about everyone in credit union land.
What also is real is a recent MIT finding that 95% of large companies with AI initiatives are getting zilch out of them.
Ouch.
That does not have to be the reality for credit unions.
On the show today is Kirk Drake, CEO of CU 2.0, author of FINANCIAL, a 2020 book that envisions ...
In a year about 500 members of First City Credit Union in Pasadena die. It’s a credit union with 57,000 members.
And what happened after the member’s death?
On the show is Saeid Kian, CEO and co-founder of Ribbon, a fintech that has developed a tool kit to help credit unions speed up the process of settling a member’s estate and also - this is huge - helping the credit union retain some of those assets on its...
This is a CU 2.0 Podcast first.
Never before, in almost 500 episodes, have we done this.
On the show is Crystal Zarse, a member of Interra Credit Union, a $1.7 billion Indiana based institution, and she is here to tell about her experience using the Prizeout Cashback+ debit card which rewards users with cashback often around 10% of purchase price, sometimes much more.
Focus on that. Here’s a member who ha...
Call this a week of different kinds of shows.
Today we are doing something we have never done before.
The guest - the only guest - is Lisa Weinstein, VP of Member Relations at Virginia Credit Union and a 33 year veteran of the credit union industry.
There is no Eltropy employee also on the show.
Weinstein is here to talk about Eltropy’s Collections 2.0, an AI powered tool kit designed to combat delin...
When will you retire?
What years of your life should be the ones where you work the longest, hardest hours?
On the show today is Derek Coburn, author of Let's Retire Retirement: How to Enjoy Life to the Fullest—Now and Later, a book that very probably will rock your mind because it challenges key beliefs that most of us share about retirement.
For instance: at what age will you retire?
Probably...
You probably have forgotten about the role of credit unions in the country’s marijuana business - estimated to be north of $40 billion. I know I had. It’s been years since we did a show on this topic.
But on the show today is Kevin Hart, CEO of Green Check Verified, a business that provides tools to financial institutions that serve the country’s many marijuana businesses.
As Hart says in the show, narijuana ...
What exactly does a credit union’s chief strategy officer do?
On the show today is Bill Snider, the Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Clearview Federal Credit Union, a credit union with around $2 billion in assets that serves 10 counties around Pittsburgh.
Longtime listeners will recall that I have expressed skepticism about strategies at many credit unions, also their commitment to innovation.
...
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