The CU2.0 Podcast

Can a credit union double in size in five years? You bet, says Kirk Kordeleski, a senior consultant with Best Innovation Group and before that, CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union on Long Island where he did exactly that.Kordeleski points to Navy and also BECU as examples of other credit unions that have also experienced exponential growth.How? That is why you want to listen to this podcast. He gives the recipe, in some detail, he... Read more

Call this the credit union oral history sequence - Blaine, Bucky Sebastian, now Gary Oakland who took over BECU, with around $700 million in assets, in the mid 1980s and when he left in 2012 it had become a $10 billion+ credit union, one of the nation's very biggest.How did Oakland do it? In this podcast you will hear his recipe for credit union success which, put simply, is make the member the center of this universe.  When t... Read more

A state regulator in Illinois. General counsel at NCUA. A co-founder of Callahan Associates. Longtime CEO at GTE Financial.  Head of the National Credit Union Foundation. Guess who.Meet Wendell Sebastian, call him Bucky.His has been an extraordinary career and you will like him. For two reasons. He is a vocal credit union cheerleader. And he deeply believes that credit unions - because they serve members, not shareholders - wi... Read more

Cannabis banking. Data breaches.  Taxation of credit unions. The disappearance of small credit unions.  The rise of $10 billion+ credit union behemoths. Welcome to the world of Caroline Willard, CEO of the Cornerstone League and, before that, she spent a decade at Co-Op in senior marketing slots.What do credit unions need to do to survive? What do leagues need to do? Willard offers candid and also optimistic thoughts abou... Read more

Elder fraud is big business. The FBI calculates last year's losses at over $700 million and involving two million seniors.That's a lot of pain.The scams are predictable. “Your grandson has been arrested. He’s in jail in Memphis.  You need to bail him out. It’s dangerous. Send $5000 in gift cards.”There are variations. But the usual drill is that a relative has fallen into trouble and the senior can be the hero.Horrible.But now... Read more

Elder fraud is big business. The FBI calculates last year's losses at over $700 million and involving two million seniors.That's a lot of pain.The scams are predictable. “Your grandson has been arrested. He’s in jail in Memphis.  You need to bail him out. It’s dangerous. Send $5000 in gift cards.”There are variations. But the usual drill is that a relative has fallen into trouble and the senior can be the hero.Horrible.But now... Read more

Put phishing emails in front of credit union employees and how many will fall for them and cough up sensitive info? 20 to 60% will get conned.And that can be costly to a credit union, both in terms of money and reputation.Enter BrightWise, a Des Moines Iowa cyber training company created by Sherri Davidoff, CEO of LMG Security, and the Iowa Credit Union League’s holding company Affiliates Management Company (AMC).After training, sa... Read more

Welcome to the CU2.0 Podcast with your host Robert McGarvey. In every episode we probe the massive digital transformation that now is remaking the nation’s credit unions and today’s guest is Vasilios Roussos, executive director of the DCU Fintech Innovation Center in Boston.The what?  You're right: this is a major departure for a credit union and in this podcast you'll find out why DCU launched a fintech incubator, how this is... Read more

At 30 he took over as CEO of State Employees' Credit Union in North Carolina.  That was 1979.  Come 2016 and he retired. SECU had grown to $33 billion - and it had 256 branches and 5800 employees.That's the Jim Blaine story and here he sits for a marathon interview, the longest in this podcast's history.It's worth the hour. Make time.Blaine starts out by questioning the wave of mergers that is now rocking the world of cre... Read more

Consumers don't want a digital bank. They want digital banking. That's a building block belief of futurist-blogger Chris Skinner who has become a regular on the conference speaking circuit.Even though what he has to say will upset many financial services executives.That's because he thinks many are going about becoming a digital banking prover all wrong.It's not about offering a mobile banking app.  It's about a reconfiguratio... Read more

Will your credit union be in business in 2029?The question is not academic and it's exactly the kind of question futurist Thomas Frey chews on.We first heard him at Co-Op's Think '18 (video here) and the conversation picks up where that presentation left off: what's the future of the car business?And know that the answer directly impacts credit unions.Know too that Frey in this conversation explores the future shape of banking -&nb... Read more

You want to know about community development financial institutions? Cliff Rosenthal is the man you want to talk to.  He literally wrote the book on CDFIs and also the longstanding credit union initiative to serve the unbanked: Democratizing Finance: Origins of the Community Development Financial Institutions Movement.Have CDFIs lived up to their potential?Have credit unions changed the shape of financial services in America?R... Read more

You want more Millennial members. You need them. Born between 1981 and 1996, Millennials are a prime age cohort for financial services - they are getting mortgages, buying cars, taking vacations. And yet many of them know squat about credit unions and do not belong to them even though in many respects credit unions line up perfectly with what Millennials want: free checking, non profit status, they are local businesses, and they pu... Read more

Ask Victor Corro, of Coopera, the Hispanic focused consulting firm for credit unions, on why Hispanics matter to credit unions and he gets impassioned.  Hispanics need credit unions, he says, just as credit unions need Hispanics.  He tells in detail exactly why that is so in this edition of the CU2.0 podcast.Note: the audio quality has imperfections in parts of this podcast.  We live in a world of imperfect telephony... Read more

Do you want the good news first or the bad?In this podcast we bring together three Gen Zers to tell the good, the bad, and the ugly about credit unions.The ugliest news: the woeful job credit unions have done in communicating their profound and manifold advantages.Do Gen Zs know about the free checking, the vast shared ATM network,  that CUs are non profit?Nope.There are cures for these ills however and the Gen Zs tell what.It... Read more

Quick now, how much did financial institutions collect in overdraft fees in 2017?  The answer is $34.3 billion. That's right, billion. A lot of us are getting soaked by high bank fees and thus TrueFees, founded by Ben Premo whose intent is to shine a light on the actual fees charged by financial institutions.Premo told me that maybe one in two FIs are opaque about their fees. That is, the info isn't clearly and readily av... Read more

How long does it takes your credit union to respond to a mortgage application with a verdict?  Anything longer than 10 minutes just may be too long. Are you still in the game?At Filene, Erin Coleman, senior impact director, mulls just that kind of question as she hunts for ways for credit unions to stay competitive in a landscape that is ever more perilous.She also discusses the need for credit unions to involve more young peo... Read more

Quick now, what country has the highest participation in credit unions? Say the US and you are wong. According to Mike Edwards, senior vice president for advocacy at the World Council of Credit Unions, it's Ireland, north and south, where 70% belong.In this podcast he tells why that participation is so high.He also tells why many regulatory matters in the US in fact originate overseas - risk based capital, Bank Secrecy Act requirem... Read more

Welcome to Up in Smoke, Part 2 - more formally, Credit Unions and Cannabis, Part 2.In last week's episode, we heard from lawyers, a lobbyist and two credit union consultants in a no holds barred exploration of the potential, and pitfalls, of cannabis accounts in credit unions. Catch up with that podcast here.This week we are digging deeper in a pair of interviews. One is with Judy Britt Cavanaugh, VP of Compliance with the Connecti... Read more