August 27, 2025 • 41 mins
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 books.
Also on the show is Nav Khanna, CEO of the $900 million First City Credit Union and his is the first credit union to go live with Ribbon.
Why did he agree to be the first? What benefits has First City seen?
Know this: at most financial institutions the process of handling a deceased member’s accounts is labor intensive. It annoys the heirs and very likely it also annoys the credit union employees who are tasked with handling the estate.
Saeid knows this first hand because the idea for Ribbon grew out of his own frustrations in settling his father’s estate - a process that took many frustrating weeks. There had to be a better way, he thought, a way that worked better for the heirs and maybe for the credit union too because the heirs no longer would leave the institution with a settlement check in hand and with the intention to never again deal with that institution.
And Nav tells us it’s really working at First City.
Listen up.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:00):
Welcome to the CU2.0 podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome to the CU2.0 podcast with big new
ideas about credit unions andconversations about innovative
technology with credit union andfintech leaders.
This podcast is brought to youby Quillo, the real-time loan
syndication network for creditunions, and by your host,
longtime credit union andfinancial technology journalist,
(00:27):
Robert McGarvey.
And now, the CU 2.0 podcast withRobert McGarvey.
SPEAKER_03 (00:35):
In a year, about 500 members of First City Credit
Union in Pasadena will die.
It's a credit union with 57,000members.
And what happens after themember's death?
On the show is Said Kian, CEOand co-founder of Ribbon, a
fintech that has developed atoolkit to help credit unions
(00:57):
speed up the process of settlinga member's estate.
And also, this is huge, helpingthe credit union retain some of
those assets on its books.
Also on the show is Nav Khanna,CEO of the$900 million First
City Credit Union, and his isthe first credit union to go
live with Ribbon.
(01:18):
Why did he agree to be thefirst?
What benefits has First Cityseen?
You'll hear the details.
Note this.
Most financial institutions, theprocess of handling a deceased
member's accounts islabor-intensive.
That annoys the heirs and verylikely and also annoys most of
the credit union employees whoare tasked with handling the
(01:40):
estate.
Saeed knows all of thisfirsthand.
because the idea for Ribbon grewout of his own frustrations in
settling his father's estate, aprocess that took many
frustrating weeks.
There had to be a better way, hethought, a way that worked
better for the heirs and maybefor the credit union too,
(02:01):
because the heirs no longerwould leave the institution with
a settlement check in hand withthe intention to never again
deal with that institution thathad frustrated them so much.
It's an automated system.
It's a smooth system.
And NAV tells us it's reallyworking at First City.
Listen up.
(02:23):
Let's start.
Introduce yourselves.
SPEAKER_02 (02:27):
Yes, I'm Saeed Kian.
I am the CEO and co-founder ofRibbon.
We're the inheritance platformfor credit unions.
SPEAKER_00 (02:36):
Hi, good morning, Robert.
My name is Nav Khanna.
I'm the president and CEO ofFirst City Credit Union in sunny
Pasadena, California.
We serve the county workers ofLos Angeles, what I like to call
hero first responders, and Iconsider First City Credit Union
financial first responders.
I've been a CEO here for aboutthree years.
(02:57):
I'm a first-time CEO, long-timeadmirer.
Great to be here.
Yeah, that credit union
SPEAKER_03 (03:03):
started with sheriff's deputies in L.A.
County.
SPEAKER_00 (03:06):
You remember that?
Absolutely.
1937, 11 sheriffs founded usbecause it was during the height
of the Great Depression, which alot of us credit unions were
founded around.
They saw their colleagues losingtheir jobs, their livelihoods,
their dignity, their homes,their lives.
And they said, we have to gettogether and help in a
(03:27):
cooperative spirit.
And our mission purpose has notchanged in the last 88 years.
SPEAKER_03 (03:32):
Tell the audience about Ribbon and specifically
start with why you got the ideato do it.
SPEAKER_02 (03:41):
My background is I was born in the US.
I have 10 plus years of fintechexperience.
I started off my career abroad.
I went to Southeast Asia.
I started working on consultingprojects, then moved into the
fintech space where I helpedlaunch a mobile money company.
I did that for a number ofyears.
moved to Singapore with my wifeto work for Facebook.
(04:02):
Back in the days where it wasjust called Facebook, working on
mobile money projects, paymentprojects, et cetera, then moved
over to Stripe, similar storythere.
I was working on helping themthink about payments and
expanding new markets.
2020 rolls around, COVID hits.
My wife and I are in Singaporeon a boring Tuesday, get a call
from my dad who tells us that hehas stage four pancreatic
(04:24):
cancer.
And it was unfortunately one ofthe worst case scenarios.
So after that phone call, youknow, I'll never forget it.
My wife and I just stood there abit in shock.
We were just thinking about, youknow, what can we do?
What should we do?
Ultimately, we decided to moveback home with him.
We move in with him in Virginia,you know, help him go to chemo
radiation.
Unfortunately, over the courseof a few months, nothing was
(04:44):
working.
Cancer continues to spread.
Ultimately decided to take thehospice route.
start crossing T's, dotting I's,doing our last father-son trips
together.
He passes away.
And as you can imagine, I'm justemotionally stunned by this and
heard, and so is my wholefamily.
And I would say within 24 to 48hours, I'm hit with what we
describe as a logisticalnightmare of inheritance.
(05:07):
And more or less, what happenedwas with every financial
institution, there was five thatmy father had, one of which is a
credit union.
With every single financialinstitution, what I saw was a
process that was offline,bifurcated.
It was a difficult experiencefor the inheritor.
And ultimately, it was a veryinefficient process for that
financial institution.
And the story I always share wasthe first time I had ever dealt
(05:29):
with the credit union, my firstinteraction ever with the credit
union was through the mechanismof inheritance, which is not
uncommon for the millennialgeneration, one of their first
touch points to be with thecredit union.
And I'd go through this wholeprocess.
It took me four, almost fiveweeks to get a basic checking
account handed over to me.
And the story I always share isI was in branch, the member
services representative, lovelylady, she's helping me through
(05:52):
everything.
And ultimately, after almostfive-week process, she writes me
a check, hands me the check, andI'm walking out the door
thinking, I just had a badexperience.
They just spent five weeks onme, and I'm holding the deposits
in my hand, the money left.
So who won in that scenario?
And ultimately, that's where theconcept and idea of Ribbon came
from, which was me going throughthis experience of loss, going
(06:13):
through the process ofinheritance, and realizing the
current system right now islose-lose.
The inheritors lose out becausethey're going through a really
awful time in addition toeverything else that's going on
in their life, and they have togo through a bureaucratic
process.
And the credit unions, thefinancial institutions, they're
losing out because they'respending operationally speaking,
a lot of hours, weeks and weeks,full-time employee resources to
(06:35):
deal with these inheritancecases.
And they're not really seeingthe next generation stay with
them.
And that's where Ribbon wasborn, saying, how can we turn
that lose-lose into a win-win?
How can we make a thoughtfulexperience for someone who's
grieving, but at the same time,make it in the interest of the
financial institution to providethat thoughtful experience by
saving them hours and hopefullybeing able to retain millions in
deposits?
SPEAKER_03 (06:54):
Now, were you the only heir, number one?
And number two, did your fatherhave a valid will?
SPEAKER_02 (07:00):
My father did have a valid will and I had a brother
and I have a brother.
So both of us were workingtogether.
We were tag teaming on this.
And even with my mother, there'sa lawyer, his wife, my
sister-in-law is a lawyer.
I come from a family of lawyers.
So we had our T's crossed andour I's dotted.
And even with this team oflawyers, we still found it to be
so challenging to go and makesure we had the right paperwork
(07:23):
and everyone has a differentprocess.
And, you know, you can neverjust send something online.
It's never self-serve.
So you always have to go inperson.
And even with all that in place,we still That's
SPEAKER_03 (07:32):
mind boggling.
I don't think you told me whenwe talked before that your
brother, a lawyer, was alsoinvolved in this.
SPEAKER_02 (07:39):
That's right.
That's right.
SPEAKER_03 (07:41):
Because I would have thought you got a lawyer on the
team.
Okay, fine.
You're going to speed it up.
Or with some lawyers, you slowit down.
Right.
SPEAKER_02 (07:50):
No, not my brother.
Not my brother.
Not my sister-in-law.
We had two lawyers on the case.
And even with that, again, weare blessed for many reasons.
And one of them was we actuallyhad one of the better case
scenarios, not just in terms ofhaving lawyers, but also having
a heads up.
Like my dad went to a hospice,which means we had time to
prepare.
A lot of Americans do not havethat kind of time.
(08:11):
That is actually a luxury and ablessing in many ways.
As hard as it was, it did allowus to get our affairs in order.
And even with that, it stilltook more than a month per
institution.
SPEAKER_03 (08:21):
Now, Nav, if I remember correctly, your
institution has assets ofsomething over$900 million, and
you have roughly 57,000 members.
Am I right?
Spot on.
Son of a gun.
I get bonus points.
57,000 members.
How many members die in atypical year?
SPEAKER_00 (08:42):
We, gosh, I'm not sure I know the exact number,
but I know it's in the hundreds,which was very, very surprising
to me.
I didn't realize we had thatmany.
Saeed, do you have any idea whenwe were doing some of the
analysis?
SPEAKER_02 (08:59):
Yeah, yeah.
When we looked at it, it wasgetting close to 500 members per
year.
So, yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (09:05):
Well, credit union membership skews old.
Not every credit union, but thevast majority of credit unions.
SPEAKER_00 (09:12):
Yeah, we do have, you know, our average age of a
membership is a little older.
It's accused around 53, butwe're bringing in some younger
members now.
However, to your point, that'sstill a very significant number
for us.
And I think you just heard theuse case that Saeed laid out.
That's 10 a week, 10 cases aweek.
SPEAKER_03 (09:30):
That's 10 a week.
That's 10 a week.
all of your membersdefinitionally will have some
asset that some heir wantsbecause they have an account
with you.
And that's a lot of, and you'renot charging a fee.
The credit union isn't charginga fee for this.
(09:50):
So that's just basically moneydown the drain.
100%.
I'm not minimizing loss of lifeor anything.
I'm just thinking about thisprocess.
I got to do all this work andI'm not getting paid a penny?
No, you don't get paid a penny.
And often the money walks outthe door at the end of the day
anyway.
SPEAKER_00 (10:11):
Yeah, absolutely right.
And to your point, I mean, itwas a very manual,
time-consuming and, you know, aprocess fraught with errors.
So let's just call it, put it ina bow.
It was a very expensiveadministrative process for us
here.
SPEAKER_03 (10:25):
Now, I...
I've worked with FinTechs andinterest in credit unions for
many years at this point.
And what I always tell them isthat it's really easy to get
your hundredth client, hundredthcredit union client.
It's pretty easy to get your10th.
Getting your first is kind oflike doing bypass surgery on
(10:47):
yourself.
It's really hard.
So what prompted you to be theguy who says, hey, I'm it.
You know, I got the sticker onmy back.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to be the first.
Where'd you get the courage todo this and why?
I know Saeed wants customers.
(11:09):
I know that.
The problem is, how do you getone?
And you're the guy who said,hey, Call me a fool, but I'm
going to be number one.
SPEAKER_00 (11:17):
Right, right.
Well, you know, as well as I do,that the fintechs have just
stormed the space becausethey're so deadly effective at
making it the processes easierfor our members and also
maniacally focusing on aproblem, a use case to be
solved.
(11:38):
For the credit union, from mylens, you know, I'm a new CEO
and we've implemented Ribbon nowfor about six months.
And I think I wanted to start tobuild that innovation engine,
that end user mindset engine,and almost show the team that
this is possible.
These FinTech partnerships arenot that scary, and in fact, can
(12:01):
be very, very mutuallyrewarding.
So being kind of a leader inthis or a fast implementer kind
of on the bleeding edge of thiswasn't very scary to me because
the way the product was reallylaid out, Saeed, was awesome at
kind of de-risking the productfor us and making it a very
(12:22):
economical process and a verycollaborative and
partnership-based process.
So my team kind of dove in fast.
So I was looking to help ourteam, First City Credit Union,
become a little more comfortablewith some of these buy and ally
partnerships versus the bills.
But at the same time, as Imentioned earlier, we had a
(12:45):
very, very challenging processon our hands that 500 of our
members had to deal with everyyear.
And it wasn't a pretty processby any means.
And so when we looked at thiskind of automated workforce,
this digitization, and it justfell in line with our digital
first strategy here at thecredit union.
And we said, this is a great usecase for us.
(13:07):
It's easy.
We can get our hands around itand we can implement it.
And speed to market kind ofmatters on a reasons for us to
get in there, aside from thatamazing story that you heard
from Saeed that really sold itto us because, you know, Ribbon
is in it for the right reasons.
It was built out of necessity inthe right space.
(13:30):
And empathy is one of our corevalues.
And this is a way to be moreempathetic with our membership.
SPEAKER_03 (13:36):
Now, I would think that if I were an employee in
your credit union tasked withdealing with bereaved relatives
who are trying to claim anestate, that I would find this
to be very emotionally drainingwork on the one hand and
frustrating for me I'm notsaying poor me, because I know
(13:57):
it's frustrating for them, therelatives too.
I wouldn't want this job.
So if you said to me, I'mturning the job over to a
machine, I'm going to say, youmy man, Nav, you my man.
Thank
SPEAKER_00 (14:07):
you.
The irony though, Robert, is youtalk about kind of turning it
over to a machine, but reallythere's a lot of empathy baked
into this that we weren't doingas humans.
For instance, as you create acase, instead of before it was
like, who's got this?
What stage of the process are wein?
It was very, how haphazard andchoppy and a lot of handoffs.
(14:27):
Sometimes the member or thebeneficiary would be at the
branch or they'd be doing itover the phone or they'd be
doing it digitally.
Now, with this kind ofstreamlined use case, this one
ownership space and the abilityto to be able to offer
condolences, even, you know,flowers and, you know, messages
(14:49):
of support creates a little moreempathy with the machines.
So it was kind of cool how thathappened.
And I'm kind of seeing this insome of the technology space
too, where sometimes, you know,the machines, you know, bring in
that empathy on purposedeliberately.
SPEAKER_03 (15:05):
Now, Are you making any money doing this?
SPEAKER_00 (15:14):
We have.
So we've got a couple ofbeneficiary members that we've
been able to cross-sell orretain, if you will, after their
significant others or familymembers passed away.
That conversation wasn'thappening, quite frankly, prior
to this.
It was strictly a paperworkprocess of getting the money out
(15:37):
to the beneficiary or the memberwho most of the time had their
accounts at B of A, Wells, andChase.
So we're still in the beginningstages as far as I'm concerned.
We're working out the processflows with Ribbon, our internal
processes, but the data thatthis tool can help us really
spit out and be a little morerelevant to those beneficiaries
(15:59):
or surviving family members, Ibelieve the potential is huge
for us to continue to retain andbecome more efficient in the
process.
Granted, it touches, you know,500 members out of our 57,000.
But it's still a digitizedstandalone process that's more
efficient with the humaninvolved in it, of course.
(16:23):
But it's really taken out a lotof the robot work for the
humans, which is challenging,getting the right documents and
verifying them and whatnot.
All of this gets automated in anice streamlined process flow.
So I believe it's going to helpus from both fronts, retention
of our deposits, but alsoefficiency.
Now,
SPEAKER_03 (16:44):
Saeed, are you fine-tuning your services as
you're watching this test case?
I mean, you have your rabbit ina cage here, and you can study
it and see what you need to dobetter.
Is that happening?
SPEAKER_02 (16:58):
Oh, absolutely.
And actually huge credit to theFirst City team, which is not
just member first andrelentlessly focused on the
member, but also open toinnovation and open to feedback.
So what we do is we have weeklycalls with the operations team
at First City.
And weekly, we'll talk withfolks who work on deceased
accounts, who work on depositoperations, fine tune it based
(17:21):
off of their feedback.
At this point, I would say atleast half, if not more of our
flow is the design based off ofthe feedback that's come from
the First City team.
City team for things like, youknow, you can imagine to get
into the nuts and bolts ofthings.
Oh, can I optimize a flow, forexample, if the Social Security
Administration alerts us thatsomeone passes away?
Can I optimize a flow if, youknow, someone is a trustee of
(17:42):
this certain type of account?
Can I optimize a flow for IRAaccounts?
And what we've seen is that kindof feedback has led to really
allow it to be a lot moreself-serve.
You know, when we first startedoff with First City, we saw it
was kind of like 65, 70 percentof cases were still coming in
the branch and 30 percent ofcases would be coming via web.
(18:05):
And then last month, what we sawwas 95 percent are web-based,
right?
So these self-serve options arebecoming first because of that
feedback.
So we're seeing that members,their families, non-members,
inheritors, next of kin arefeeling a lot more comfortable
because we've been able tofine-tune this product as we've
gotten feedback from the FirstCity
SPEAKER_03 (18:27):
team.
You've developed over time, alot of expertise in this.
So, I mean, a relative of minedied recently, and the executor
asked me, how do I get a deathcertificate?
And I said, I don't have anyidea.
She didn't have any idea.
You probably know the answer tothat question.
I'm not asking you for it,because by now, I hope she's
(18:47):
figured it out.
SPEAKER_02 (18:49):
To
SPEAKER_03 (18:50):
people like us, this is like, I don't know, a death
certificate?
How do you get it?
SPEAKER_02 (18:55):
Yeah, and it's honestly, it shouldn't be...
One of the things we hope forRibbon to be is let people focus
on the things that matter intheir lives and let FinTechs
take care of the nitty gritties,the details, logistics.
So what I hope our company cando is just make it so that And
not everyone needs to knowexactly, specifically, oh, if I
(19:16):
need this kind of document, hereis where X, Y, and Z need to be
signed off, and here's how youget it notarized.
I want our company to get to apoint where we can just offload
a lot of that burden.
It's simple and it's intuitivewithin the flow, where to get
certain documentation, how toget it signed, get it signed
digitally, and be able toprovide it to their wonderful
institutions and be able to dothat.
And in order to be able toprovide that flow, you can
(19:38):
imagine...
Not just me, but the wholeRibbon team had to become
experts in this whole process,which we spent a lot of time in
the details.
Spending time with the depositoperations team at First City,
for example, this really gave usthe nitty-gritty and the details
of what are the different typesof documents you need, what are
the different flows, how do youcreate dynamic workflows.
(20:00):
So what we're trying to do isbecome experts so that members,
non-members, and charactersdon't have to be.
SPEAKER_03 (20:06):
Now, from the time you told Saeed and Ruben, okay,
it's a go.
How much time it lasts beforeyou were operational?
SPEAKER_00 (20:14):
It felt like lightning speed.
In fact, I remember the teamtelling me we're up and running.
I'm like, what?
Really?
So it was, do you remember,Saeed?
Was it weeks?
SPEAKER_02 (20:24):
Weeks.
I mean, it was weeks.
Credit to Nuv and the team.
I mean, that is, when you talkabout innovation, innovation
mindset, and you talk aboutagile and working agile, I would
say from contract signing togoing live was the fastest
implementation we've had.
And they were the firstinstitution in the entire
country to have theirinheritance flow automated
because of that.
SPEAKER_00 (20:44):
Yeah, I think part of that was, you know, that
we're small and being a smallershop, you know, we have 120 FTE.
We can be more agile.
We can be more nimble.
I used to work for a largerinstitution, about 5 billion
credit union, and it was alittle harder to get things done
there.
You know, from an innovationperspective, you had some
committees, you had some riskanalyses, some hierarchical
(21:07):
decision making.
And it was just like here waslike, let's go.
What do you know?
Let's do this.
What do you need?
You know, what are theroadblocks?
Let's let's plan it out, let'smeasure twice, cut once,
execute, and empower the team.
And so the team was awesome.
It was a very, very quick, easy,and I'll say painless
implementation.
SPEAKER_03 (21:29):
That is, see, that's why I love to have a credit
union on this show, because thefintech guy will always tell me,
oh, we implement this.
You know, you tell me on Monday,by Friday, it's up and running,
baby.
Core integration, everything.
It's all happening.
SPEAKER_00 (21:41):
We heard that, too.
You know, it's like, oh, youdon't need any IT resources on
your side.
And of course, our IT team was,yeah, right.
But I believe that it was allvery, very smooth and
streamlined.
SPEAKER_03 (21:52):
Well,
SPEAKER_00 (21:52):
you don't need
SPEAKER_03 (21:52):
core implementation for this, I don't think.
SPEAKER_02 (21:55):
It's helpful to have core, but you don't need it, is
what we always say.
It's always helpful to have corebecause you can automate a lot
of those processes, but youdon't need core to get started.
And again, credit to First Cityteam.
They were like, okay, well, ifwe don't need it right away,
let's start using the tool.
Let's see how it works.
And they really helped us tofire it.
SPEAKER_00 (22:13):
And that's really part of the philosophy here is,
you know, progress overperfection and kind of
continuous improvement.
Let's not look for everythingout of the box because then
everything becomes unattainableand maybe unachievable or gets
pushed to phase two or three,which never comes.
So let's just keep it simple.
Let's crawl, walk, run.
Let's make sure today is alittle better than yesterday.
(22:34):
And yesterday, you know,tomorrow is a little better than
today.
And just keep that mindset.
And I think that helped us getback to speed to action.
SPEAKER_03 (22:43):
As I indicated earlier, I think also this is a
wonderful test case becauseprobably no employee at your
credit union liked beinginvolved in this.
Collections is another thingwhere I'm a collections guy and
you say, I'm going to automatecollections.
I say, thank God.
(23:04):
I hate making those
SPEAKER_00 (23:08):
calls.
We don't want to go down thatpath.
But, you know, to your point,this actually allowed the humans
to do what we need the humans todo more of and better, which is
be empathetic.
So they didn't have to just get,you know, quagmired and process
and documents and get right intothe process flow that could be
(23:29):
automated and pushed off to therobots.
But, um, it actually allowed theteam more time to sit down and
have a conversation and justsay, you know, sorry, so sorry,
this happened, you know, uh,what can we do to help?
And we're here.
And I don't know if you knowmuch about us, if you're from
outside, et cetera, et cetera.
So it was, um, It was, I think,pushing the right processes to
(23:50):
the right automation andallowing the humans to elevate.
Nobody wants to shy away fromthese processes because we hire
empathetic people and we havewonderful people that care on
our staff.
And this just allows them toshine more in that space versus
have to jump into a processflow.
SPEAKER_03 (24:09):
Now, when a member dies, how typically does the
credit union learn about this?
Is that...
Apparently, Social Securitysometimes notifies, but I assume
there are other more directpaths.
SPEAKER_00 (24:24):
For us, historically, it's been the
beneficiary or the family memberthat contacts us, and that
starts the process.
So it's a very reactive processfor us.
I think the goal is to get alittle more proactive using
intelligence and data smarter,but maybe I'll defer to Saeed on
where we're headed there.
SPEAKER_02 (24:46):
Exactly.
I mean, so there's really a fewways that folks can learn about
it.
As Nev mentioned, the primaryways to the beneficiaries and
Mexicans, government agencies,Social Security Administration
being the most prominent, butother ones too, like VA, et
cetera, they will alert aninstitution, but generally only
if, for example, in the case ofSocial Security, only if they're
receiving Social Security intothe account.
(25:08):
So you can have Lots of cases,for example, like my dad was a
classic case with his creditunion.
He wasn't getting SocialSecurity payments into that
credit union, so they wouldn'thave known were it not for me
and my brother going andalerting that credit union that
he passed away.
So what we're doing now is we'reimplementing the largest master
file, what's called the limitedaccess death master file, in
combination with AI online scansfor things like obituaries,
(25:33):
things like social monitoringand web monitoring to be able to
proactively alert our customerscustomers that's the ones passed
away so uh first city will bethe first ones to to get that
kind of you know automation umprovided to them which is you
know that way you don't there'sa lot of I'll save all the
details but a lot of operationalinefficiencies if you don't know
that one of your members passedaway can be really costly and
(25:54):
burdensome and just so mucheasier for us to be able to say
hey we got news that somethingpassed away you should freeze
that account
SPEAKER_03 (26:00):
now tell me some of the operational inefficiencies
that arise
SPEAKER_02 (26:04):
Yeah, I can.
Yeah.
For a few, for example, is youhave like auto payments
continuing to go and those autopayments go out.
Right.
So someone passes away and thosepayments are continuing to go
out.
And then there's cases of fraud.
What if someone goes and triesto withdraw the money and the
account's actually frozen?
You're not allowed to have thathappen.
There's a lot of things that canhappen from a compliance and
(26:26):
regulatory or just from a fraudor cost perspective.
There's a lot of reasons why youjust want to freeze an account
when someone passes away.
It just makes things a lotsimpler and clearer.
So you don't have this back andforth.
It's very common for ourcustomers to tell us that they
had an account where they justhad to go and do something like
reclamation with treasurybecause social security payments
came in after someone passedaway.
UNKNOWN (26:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (26:50):
You mentioned fraud.
Nav, is that a concern for youat the credit union, that
they're fraudulent?
SPEAKER_00 (26:56):
Fraud is always a concern, and it just continues
to grow from a member-to-membertype fraud, but cyber threats as
well, social engineering,phishing.
Elderly are a target.
In these instances, sadly, thereare people that prey upon
beneficiaries and survivingfamily members, maybe not so
(27:20):
much from a fraud perspective,but just from a very
unscrupulous perspective interms of We can help and, you
know, we'll take care of it.
And then who knows, then thefraud happens.
So it's a concern.
It's always there.
It's omnipresent and it'sgrowing.
And sadly, sometimes technologyhas made that harder because
some of these are public recordsand some of these surviving
(27:43):
family members, beneficiariesare targets.
So we definitely want to makesure that that education to the
survivors and beneficiaries isthere so they understand, you
know, we are their officialpartner in this process and we
will make sure that we do it theright way um and uh and be wary
(28:04):
of you know others that may belurking
SPEAKER_03 (28:06):
now are are other institutions on this platform
SPEAKER_02 (28:13):
yes yes yes yes yes
SPEAKER_03 (28:16):
how many
SPEAKER_02 (28:17):
We're getting close to double digits now, so we're
going to share more for end ofthe year, but it's been
unbelievably exciting being thefirst one and for Citi being the
first one to join with us lessthan a year ago now.
We've only been up with them forsix months, and thanks to that
partnership, thanks to thatfeedback, and thanks to those
use cases, We've gotten a lotmore interest from other credit
(28:41):
unions, other financialinstitutions across the country
who say this is not somethingthat we should be spending
full-time resources on.
Having a bad experience forinheritors is not what we want.
Being part of the Great WealthTransfer is something that
aligns with our strategic goals.
So, Robert, I believe the firsttime you and I chatted, more
than a year ago now, we wereessentially just a few lines of
(29:03):
code at that point.
And, you know, a promise.
Oh, you lied
SPEAKER_03 (29:06):
to me.
You lied
SPEAKER_02 (29:08):
to me.
No, it was live.
It was live.
It was just, you know, no onewas using it.
And the first city wasn't usingit and no one else was using it.
And then here we are now beingable to say that, you know, we
process thousands of inheritanceclaims a month.
And we're really excited aboutthat.
SPEAKER_03 (29:24):
Yeah.
And as I'm sure you're findingout, of the way credit unions
adopt new technology is if youcall me, I probably don't take
the call.
If I'm talking to Nav at theCalifornia League and he says,
you know, I got this great thingthat's really handling this
whole problem that we've had.
I'll say, tell me more and giveme the guy's number or email
(29:46):
address.
SPEAKER_00 (29:47):
That's right.
That's right.
I have one...
Are you saying we're lemmingsor?
No, no,
SPEAKER_03 (29:50):
that is considered the most valid endorsement.
SPEAKER_00 (29:57):
Of course, I'm being facetious, but you're absolutely
right.
I mean, we listen to othercohort and colleagues that are
doing great things and we trustthat, right?
So there's a high level oftrust.
It is a very small industry.
Everyone knows everybody.
It is very incestuous.
But having a proven use casebeats any firm's marketing and
(30:22):
pitch, you know, as far as we'reconcerned.
I used to think we were slow,you know, credit unions are just
slow to adopt and makedecisions.
I think it's more that we'rejust more deliberate.
SPEAKER_02 (30:33):
I really agree with that.
And the number one piece ofadvice we got as a fintech when
entering was find the rightfirst partners, because A
reputation precedes folks inthis industry.
And that if you have the rightreference partner, it will
change everything for youbecause folks will know that
they have a reputation of beingdeliberate, innovative,
member-focused, et cetera.
(30:55):
And if they can vouch for you,it'll do more.
As exactly like Nav said, it'lldo more than any marketing
campaign will ever do.
And that has been so true forus.
It's just the difference betweenme saying, I promise you this
will be really good versus Navsaying, this is something that
we would like for our creditunion as change the trajectory
of our business.
SPEAKER_03 (31:12):
And he's saying he's actually making some money doing
this.
It's not just all cost, whichis, you know, I'm a credit union
executive, and I hear that myinterest level goes way up.
Yeah, it's a lot of fintechs arepure cost, and that's no fun.
SPEAKER_00 (31:28):
There has to be an ROI, though, you know, Robert,
with no matter, you know, whatmembers...
investment money we spend.
And it could be, like I said, acombination of revenue growth
and or expense reduction and oryou know, employee satisfaction,
member satisfaction, all thatcomes into play.
(31:49):
But we deliberately looked atRibbon as, you know, what is the
return on this expenditure?
This is our members' money.
And there was a use case there,and we're starting to realize
that.
As I said, I believe the best isyet to come.
We have not leveraged the toolas much as we need to.
Quite frankly, and Saeed knowsthis, we haven't really launched
(32:10):
this product to the membership.
It's been six months.
We've been trying to get theprocesses right and the training
and all of that put into play.
So we're just kind of funnelinga lot of our members to the
Ribbon platform, be it if theycome in in person or pick up the
phone, which is great.
But imagine when we really startto market this as a
(32:32):
differentiator.
That really hasn't even startedyet.
So I just see tons of potentialhere for us.
SPEAKER_03 (32:38):
I've liked this product since I heard about it,
really.
It's fantastic.
It really does alleviate a lotof aggravation that heirs are
feeling at a time when theydon't really need this
aggravation.
And in many cases, bills arecoming in that have to be paid,
and they just as soon pay it outof the estate.
(33:00):
But the money's frozen.
It's like, what?
I can't touch the money?
Now, Saeed, first city aside,what do you see the cost
structure to a credit unionbeing.
I mean, I imagine Nav's anintelligent guy.
He probably got a pretty gooddeal.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (33:20):
Yeah, he actually framed it perfectly.
We want to do it based off ofROI and business case.
We actually felt that from thebeginning.
We tried in our very early daysto kind of just go out there and
wing it.
I'll tell you right now, thatfails.
And it fails miserably.
Very quickly, we realized youneed a business case, you need
an ROI.
And what we do is based off of afew factors.
(33:42):
How do you value memberexperience?
How many resources do you havededicated to this process right
now?
So operational efficiency,whether or not we can reduce
full-time hours on thisparticular workflow.
So you can put them on somethingthat's higher ROI, for example.
So operational efficiency is abig one.
And then deposit retention,using those three pillars, we
say, okay, you fall into thistier of pricing.
(34:03):
So usually, you know, the assetsthat you have, the number of
members that you have, and theamount of time that you spent
per deceased account, also knownas like, how many resources do
you have dedicated for depositoperations on deceased account
workflows will put you in somekind of tier.
And that tier for us is allabout what can make sure that
Ribbon can cover its costs andscale the business.
(34:25):
But most importantly, can weactually really provide value
way above and beyond theinvestment it takes in terms of
monthly costs when it comes toRibbon?
So we tier it.
based off of the use case, thebusiness case.
And then that way we take anindividualized approach to
pricing and cost.
And so far, what we're seeing isour target is that for every
(34:46):
dollar that you're putting inRibbon, you should be getting at
least$2 back.
That's really what we wannashoot for.
So we really wanna make surethat you have a very, very
strong business case.
SPEAKER_03 (34:55):
What's the size of the biggest credit that's using
Ribbon?
SPEAKER_02 (34:59):
We have, I guess, depends on how you mean size.
SPEAKER_03 (35:02):
Assets, assets.
SPEAKER_02 (35:04):
Yeah, 5 billion.
So, you know, we're startingto...
We're relevant, I would argue,for any credit union at any
size.
You know, if you're$50 million,$100 million,$1 billion,$5
billion,$20 billion and beyond,you know, everyone goes through
this.
And so right now, what we'reseeing is most of our customers
fall in somewhere between$500million to under$6 billion.
(35:27):
And we hope to, yeah, to offerthis service to anyone.
SPEAKER_03 (35:31):
Yeah, I would say once you have$500 million, you
can...
probably afford this service andit will pay for itself and
reduce staff time, I think.
It's
SPEAKER_00 (35:43):
a...
Say, it's a very scalable, veryscalable tool.
So that's very exciting to us aswe're planning to grow.
SPEAKER_03 (35:50):
Now, have you, Say, you must have regionalized this
product too.
In other words, death andestates in Virginia are
different from death and estatesin California.
I don't know how, I hope youknow how.
SPEAKER_02 (36:07):
Unfortunately, very familiar with all 50 states and
territories and also whathappens if someone passes away
abroad.
And we've had to create a systemthat is agnostic because, you
know, First City is not going tojust have members that are in
California.
You know, if someone passesaway, they might have a death
certificate that comes fromOhio.
(36:28):
So how do you deal with thosecases?
So we have dynamic workflowsbased off of that.
And we created a system that asnow said, is intended to scale,
is intended to be agnostic, andis intended to continue to
provide value-added resourcesand value-added services.
So we get really excitedthinking, OK, if you have an
agnostic system that can applyto anywhere in the country or
anywhere in the world, well,what does it look like if you
(36:50):
send notes or flowers to anyonein the world?
What does it look like if youstart giving that member-first
experience to anyone?
What does it look like when youstart offering other kinds of
services?
So we wanted to start off withthe architecture and the
platform being neutral and notjust contained to one state or
region because we knew thatwould allow us to scale.
And we also knew that ourcustomers like First City were
(37:11):
going to need that from thestart.
SPEAKER_03 (37:13):
Then earlier on, you seemed to indicate that success
with Ribbon would pave the wayto more fintechs coming into
First City.
What kinds of fintechs are youlooking at?
SPEAKER_00 (37:27):
Yeah, you know, when I say pave the way for more
fintechs, it's really paved theway for us to be able to, you
know, engage and partner andally with various other, you
know, providers that aretackling some very meaty topics
and issues in our businesstoday.
You know, so what we are doingis looking at all incumbents, if
(37:52):
you will, and on the lendingfront, we've been engaging with
several companies you know,vendors that are helping us now,
FinTechs.
We're also looking at them froman operational perspective as we
start to kind of now dabbleinto, you know, artificial
intelligence agents andworkflows of which, you know,
(38:15):
Ribbon is a very specializedworkflow in that sense.
But again, the technology now isjust, you know, such a game
changer where we have even alending process, for example,
where it was a very manual,labor-intensive, follow-up,
back-and-forth type of a processflow can be severely automated
(38:38):
now for both membersatisfaction, employee
satisfaction, get the people outof the jobs that do robot work,
and ultimately efficiency andscalability as well.
So we are looking at alldifferent fronts of a that have
done, quite frankly, a muchbetter job than the entire
generic credit union has done bytackling very specific issues
(39:03):
pain points and issues and usecases.
So it's really becomingenterprise-wide, even member
fraud.
I mean, we're engaging all sortsof fintechs now to help us be
more predictive and prescriptivemarketing.
We're partnering with a ton offintechs that are helping us to
get the right products to theright members at the right time
or have the right conversationswith the right members at the
(39:25):
right time in the way they wantto be conversed with.
Prior to these fintechpartnerships, we weren't able to
do or build all of that.
We can't build all of that.
We're a small-ish credit union.
I have to be careful when I saya$900 million credit union is a
small credit union.
Some of my$100 millioncolleagues get very frustrated
(39:46):
when I say stuff like that.
But I think the$5 billion shops,the$10 billion shops still have
issues around these areas andsiloed processes and manual
processes and redundant andinefficient processes, et
cetera.
And so we have to buy, we haveto ally.
And I think our successfulpartnership with Ribbon has
(40:07):
given a lot more comfort to myteam that we can do this and we
can see benefits, you know, fromdoing it.
Now, we were involved with someother fintechs prior to Saeed,
but this one was just such atremendous use case with such a
great story that goes around itthat the team has really rallied
(40:28):
around that.
SPEAKER_03 (40:29):
All you have to do is tell the employees, hey,
These fintechs aren't like ourcore provider.
I know you hate the coreprovider.
Everybody hates the coreprovider.
These guys are much nicer guys.
SPEAKER_00 (40:40):
I don't know how they do it because I see Saeed
everywhere.
He's all over the place.
I think there's a clone or atwin somewhere.
It's AI, man.
SPEAKER_03 (40:52):
There's six of him.
SPEAKER_00 (40:53):
He's
SPEAKER_03 (40:53):
doing three podcasts right now.
SPEAKER_00 (40:58):
I wouldn't be surprised.
SPEAKER_03 (41:05):
Before we go, think hard about how you can help
support this podcast so we cando more interviews with more
thoughtful leaders in the creditunion world.
What we're trying to figure outhere in these podcasts is what's
next for credit unions.
What can they do to really,really, really make a difference
in the financial scene?
Can't all be mega banks, can it?
(41:26):
It's my hope it won't all bemedical banks.
It'll always be a place forcredit unions.
That's what we're discussinghere.
So figure out how you can help.
Get in touch with me.
This is rjmcgarvey at gmail.com.
Robert McGarvey again.
That's rjmcgarvey at gmail.com.
Get in touch.
We'll figure out a way that youcan help.
We need your support.
(41:47):
We want your support.
We thank you for your support.
The CU2.0 Podcast.
Welcome to the CU2.0 podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome to the CU2.0 podcast with big new
ideas about credit unions andconversations about innovative
technology with credit union andfintech leaders.
This podcast is brought to youby Quillo, the real-time loan
syndication network for creditunions, and by your host,
longtime credit union andfinancial technology journalist,
(00:27):
Robert McGarvey.
And now, the CU 2.0 podcast withRobert McGarvey.
SPEAKER_03 (00:35):
In a year, about 500 members of First City Credit
Union in Pasadena will die.
It's a credit union with 57,000members.
And what happens after themember's death?
On the show is Said Kian, CEOand co-founder of Ribbon, a
fintech that has developed atoolkit to help credit unions
(00:57):
speed up the process of settlinga member's estate.
And also, this is huge, helpingthe credit union retain some of
those assets on its books.
Also on the show is Nav Khanna,CEO of the$900 million First
City Credit Union, and his isthe first credit union to go
live with Ribbon.
(01:18):
Why did he agree to be thefirst?
What benefits has First Cityseen?
You'll hear the details.
Note this.
Most financial institutions, theprocess of handling a deceased
member's accounts islabor-intensive.
That annoys the heirs and verylikely and also annoys most of
the credit union employees whoare tasked with handling the
(01:40):
estate.
Saeed knows all of thisfirsthand.
because the idea for Ribbon grewout of his own frustrations in
settling his father's estate, aprocess that took many
frustrating weeks.
There had to be a better way, hethought, a way that worked
better for the heirs and maybefor the credit union too,
(02:01):
because the heirs no longerwould leave the institution with
a settlement check in hand withthe intention to never again
deal with that institution thathad frustrated them so much.
It's an automated system.
It's a smooth system.
And NAV tells us it's reallyworking at First City.
Listen up.
(02:23):
Let's start.
Introduce yourselves.
SPEAKER_02 (02:27):
Yes, I'm Saeed Kian.
I am the CEO and co-founder ofRibbon.
We're the inheritance platformfor credit unions.
SPEAKER_00 (02:36):
Hi, good morning, Robert.
My name is Nav Khanna.
I'm the president and CEO ofFirst City Credit Union in sunny
Pasadena, California.
We serve the county workers ofLos Angeles, what I like to call
hero first responders, and Iconsider First City Credit Union
financial first responders.
I've been a CEO here for aboutthree years.
(02:57):
I'm a first-time CEO, long-timeadmirer.
Great to be here.
Yeah, that credit union
SPEAKER_03 (03:03):
started with sheriff's deputies in L.A.
County.
SPEAKER_00 (03:06):
You remember that?
Absolutely.
1937, 11 sheriffs founded usbecause it was during the height
of the Great Depression, which alot of us credit unions were
founded around.
They saw their colleagues losingtheir jobs, their livelihoods,
their dignity, their homes,their lives.
And they said, we have to gettogether and help in a
(03:27):
cooperative spirit.
And our mission purpose has notchanged in the last 88 years.
SPEAKER_03 (03:32):
Tell the audience about Ribbon and specifically
start with why you got the ideato do it.
SPEAKER_02 (03:41):
My background is I was born in the US.
I have 10 plus years of fintechexperience.
I started off my career abroad.
I went to Southeast Asia.
I started working on consultingprojects, then moved into the
fintech space where I helpedlaunch a mobile money company.
I did that for a number ofyears.
moved to Singapore with my wifeto work for Facebook.
(04:02):
Back in the days where it wasjust called Facebook, working on
mobile money projects, paymentprojects, et cetera, then moved
over to Stripe, similar storythere.
I was working on helping themthink about payments and
expanding new markets.
2020 rolls around, COVID hits.
My wife and I are in Singaporeon a boring Tuesday, get a call
from my dad who tells us that hehas stage four pancreatic
(04:24):
cancer.
And it was unfortunately one ofthe worst case scenarios.
So after that phone call, youknow, I'll never forget it.
My wife and I just stood there abit in shock.
We were just thinking about, youknow, what can we do?
What should we do?
Ultimately, we decided to moveback home with him.
We move in with him in Virginia,you know, help him go to chemo
radiation.
Unfortunately, over the courseof a few months, nothing was
(04:44):
working.
Cancer continues to spread.
Ultimately decided to take thehospice route.
start crossing T's, dotting I's,doing our last father-son trips
together.
He passes away.
And as you can imagine, I'm justemotionally stunned by this and
heard, and so is my wholefamily.
And I would say within 24 to 48hours, I'm hit with what we
describe as a logisticalnightmare of inheritance.
(05:07):
And more or less, what happenedwas with every financial
institution, there was five thatmy father had, one of which is a
credit union.
With every single financialinstitution, what I saw was a
process that was offline,bifurcated.
It was a difficult experiencefor the inheritor.
And ultimately, it was a veryinefficient process for that
financial institution.
And the story I always share wasthe first time I had ever dealt
(05:29):
with the credit union, my firstinteraction ever with the credit
union was through the mechanismof inheritance, which is not
uncommon for the millennialgeneration, one of their first
touch points to be with thecredit union.
And I'd go through this wholeprocess.
It took me four, almost fiveweeks to get a basic checking
account handed over to me.
And the story I always share isI was in branch, the member
services representative, lovelylady, she's helping me through
(05:52):
everything.
And ultimately, after almostfive-week process, she writes me
a check, hands me the check, andI'm walking out the door
thinking, I just had a badexperience.
They just spent five weeks onme, and I'm holding the deposits
in my hand, the money left.
So who won in that scenario?
And ultimately, that's where theconcept and idea of Ribbon came
from, which was me going throughthis experience of loss, going
(06:13):
through the process ofinheritance, and realizing the
current system right now islose-lose.
The inheritors lose out becausethey're going through a really
awful time in addition toeverything else that's going on
in their life, and they have togo through a bureaucratic
process.
And the credit unions, thefinancial institutions, they're
losing out because they'respending operationally speaking,
a lot of hours, weeks and weeks,full-time employee resources to
(06:35):
deal with these inheritancecases.
And they're not really seeingthe next generation stay with
them.
And that's where Ribbon wasborn, saying, how can we turn
that lose-lose into a win-win?
How can we make a thoughtfulexperience for someone who's
grieving, but at the same time,make it in the interest of the
financial institution to providethat thoughtful experience by
saving them hours and hopefullybeing able to retain millions in
deposits?
SPEAKER_03 (06:54):
Now, were you the only heir, number one?
And number two, did your fatherhave a valid will?
SPEAKER_02 (07:00):
My father did have a valid will and I had a brother
and I have a brother.
So both of us were workingtogether.
We were tag teaming on this.
And even with my mother, there'sa lawyer, his wife, my
sister-in-law is a lawyer.
I come from a family of lawyers.
So we had our T's crossed andour I's dotted.
And even with this team oflawyers, we still found it to be
so challenging to go and makesure we had the right paperwork
(07:23):
and everyone has a differentprocess.
And, you know, you can neverjust send something online.
It's never self-serve.
So you always have to go inperson.
And even with all that in place,we still That's
SPEAKER_03 (07:32):
mind boggling.
I don't think you told me whenwe talked before that your
brother, a lawyer, was alsoinvolved in this.
SPEAKER_02 (07:39):
That's right.
That's right.
SPEAKER_03 (07:41):
Because I would have thought you got a lawyer on the
team.
Okay, fine.
You're going to speed it up.
Or with some lawyers, you slowit down.
Right.
SPEAKER_02 (07:50):
No, not my brother.
Not my brother.
Not my sister-in-law.
We had two lawyers on the case.
And even with that, again, weare blessed for many reasons.
And one of them was we actuallyhad one of the better case
scenarios, not just in terms ofhaving lawyers, but also having
a heads up.
Like my dad went to a hospice,which means we had time to
prepare.
A lot of Americans do not havethat kind of time.
(08:11):
That is actually a luxury and ablessing in many ways.
As hard as it was, it did allowus to get our affairs in order.
And even with that, it stilltook more than a month per
institution.
SPEAKER_03 (08:21):
Now, Nav, if I remember correctly, your
institution has assets ofsomething over$900 million, and
you have roughly 57,000 members.
Am I right?
Spot on.
Son of a gun.
I get bonus points.
57,000 members.
How many members die in atypical year?
SPEAKER_00 (08:42):
We, gosh, I'm not sure I know the exact number,
but I know it's in the hundreds,which was very, very surprising
to me.
I didn't realize we had thatmany.
Saeed, do you have any idea whenwe were doing some of the
analysis?
SPEAKER_02 (08:59):
Yeah, yeah.
When we looked at it, it wasgetting close to 500 members per
year.
So, yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (09:05):
Well, credit union membership skews old.
Not every credit union, but thevast majority of credit unions.
SPEAKER_00 (09:12):
Yeah, we do have, you know, our average age of a
membership is a little older.
It's accused around 53, butwe're bringing in some younger
members now.
However, to your point, that'sstill a very significant number
for us.
And I think you just heard theuse case that Saeed laid out.
That's 10 a week, 10 cases aweek.
SPEAKER_03 (09:30):
That's 10 a week.
That's 10 a week.
all of your membersdefinitionally will have some
asset that some heir wantsbecause they have an account
with you.
And that's a lot of, and you'renot charging a fee.
The credit union isn't charginga fee for this.
(09:50):
So that's just basically moneydown the drain.
100%.
I'm not minimizing loss of lifeor anything.
I'm just thinking about thisprocess.
I got to do all this work andI'm not getting paid a penny?
No, you don't get paid a penny.
And often the money walks outthe door at the end of the day
anyway.
SPEAKER_00 (10:11):
Yeah, absolutely right.
And to your point, I mean, itwas a very manual,
time-consuming and, you know, aprocess fraught with errors.
So let's just call it, put it ina bow.
It was a very expensiveadministrative process for us
here.
SPEAKER_03 (10:25):
Now, I...
I've worked with FinTechs andinterest in credit unions for
many years at this point.
And what I always tell them isthat it's really easy to get
your hundredth client, hundredthcredit union client.
It's pretty easy to get your10th.
Getting your first is kind oflike doing bypass surgery on
(10:47):
yourself.
It's really hard.
So what prompted you to be theguy who says, hey, I'm it.
You know, I got the sticker onmy back.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to be the first.
Where'd you get the courage todo this and why?
I know Saeed wants customers.
(11:09):
I know that.
The problem is, how do you getone?
And you're the guy who said,hey, Call me a fool, but I'm
going to be number one.
SPEAKER_00 (11:17):
Right, right.
Well, you know, as well as I do,that the fintechs have just
stormed the space becausethey're so deadly effective at
making it the processes easierfor our members and also
maniacally focusing on aproblem, a use case to be
solved.
(11:38):
For the credit union, from mylens, you know, I'm a new CEO
and we've implemented Ribbon nowfor about six months.
And I think I wanted to start tobuild that innovation engine,
that end user mindset engine,and almost show the team that
this is possible.
These FinTech partnerships arenot that scary, and in fact, can
(12:01):
be very, very mutuallyrewarding.
So being kind of a leader inthis or a fast implementer kind
of on the bleeding edge of thiswasn't very scary to me because
the way the product was reallylaid out, Saeed, was awesome at
kind of de-risking the productfor us and making it a very
(12:22):
economical process and a verycollaborative and
partnership-based process.
So my team kind of dove in fast.
So I was looking to help ourteam, First City Credit Union,
become a little more comfortablewith some of these buy and ally
partnerships versus the bills.
But at the same time, as Imentioned earlier, we had a
(12:45):
very, very challenging processon our hands that 500 of our
members had to deal with everyyear.
And it wasn't a pretty processby any means.
And so when we looked at thiskind of automated workforce,
this digitization, and it justfell in line with our digital
first strategy here at thecredit union.
And we said, this is a great usecase for us.
(13:07):
It's easy.
We can get our hands around itand we can implement it.
And speed to market kind ofmatters on a reasons for us to
get in there, aside from thatamazing story that you heard
from Saeed that really sold itto us because, you know, Ribbon
is in it for the right reasons.
It was built out of necessity inthe right space.
(13:30):
And empathy is one of our corevalues.
And this is a way to be moreempathetic with our membership.
SPEAKER_03 (13:36):
Now, I would think that if I were an employee in
your credit union tasked withdealing with bereaved relatives
who are trying to claim anestate, that I would find this
to be very emotionally drainingwork on the one hand and
frustrating for me I'm notsaying poor me, because I know
(13:57):
it's frustrating for them, therelatives too.
I wouldn't want this job.
So if you said to me, I'mturning the job over to a
machine, I'm going to say, youmy man, Nav, you my man.
Thank
SPEAKER_00 (14:07):
you.
The irony though, Robert, is youtalk about kind of turning it
over to a machine, but reallythere's a lot of empathy baked
into this that we weren't doingas humans.
For instance, as you create acase, instead of before it was
like, who's got this?
What stage of the process are wein?
It was very, how haphazard andchoppy and a lot of handoffs.
(14:27):
Sometimes the member or thebeneficiary would be at the
branch or they'd be doing itover the phone or they'd be
doing it digitally.
Now, with this kind ofstreamlined use case, this one
ownership space and the abilityto to be able to offer
condolences, even, you know,flowers and, you know, messages
(14:49):
of support creates a little moreempathy with the machines.
So it was kind of cool how thathappened.
And I'm kind of seeing this insome of the technology space
too, where sometimes, you know,the machines, you know, bring in
that empathy on purposedeliberately.
SPEAKER_03 (15:05):
Now, Are you making any money doing this?
SPEAKER_00 (15:14):
We have.
So we've got a couple ofbeneficiary members that we've
been able to cross-sell orretain, if you will, after their
significant others or familymembers passed away.
That conversation wasn'thappening, quite frankly, prior
to this.
It was strictly a paperworkprocess of getting the money out
(15:37):
to the beneficiary or the memberwho most of the time had their
accounts at B of A, Wells, andChase.
So we're still in the beginningstages as far as I'm concerned.
We're working out the processflows with Ribbon, our internal
processes, but the data thatthis tool can help us really
spit out and be a little morerelevant to those beneficiaries
(15:59):
or surviving family members, Ibelieve the potential is huge
for us to continue to retain andbecome more efficient in the
process.
Granted, it touches, you know,500 members out of our 57,000.
But it's still a digitizedstandalone process that's more
efficient with the humaninvolved in it, of course.
(16:23):
But it's really taken out a lotof the robot work for the
humans, which is challenging,getting the right documents and
verifying them and whatnot.
All of this gets automated in anice streamlined process flow.
So I believe it's going to helpus from both fronts, retention
of our deposits, but alsoefficiency.
Now,
SPEAKER_03 (16:44):
Saeed, are you fine-tuning your services as
you're watching this test case?
I mean, you have your rabbit ina cage here, and you can study
it and see what you need to dobetter.
Is that happening?
SPEAKER_02 (16:58):
Oh, absolutely.
And actually huge credit to theFirst City team, which is not
just member first andrelentlessly focused on the
member, but also open toinnovation and open to feedback.
So what we do is we have weeklycalls with the operations team
at First City.
And weekly, we'll talk withfolks who work on deceased
accounts, who work on depositoperations, fine tune it based
(17:21):
off of their feedback.
At this point, I would say atleast half, if not more of our
flow is the design based off ofthe feedback that's come from
the First City team.
City team for things like, youknow, you can imagine to get
into the nuts and bolts ofthings.
Oh, can I optimize a flow, forexample, if the Social Security
Administration alerts us thatsomeone passes away?
Can I optimize a flow if, youknow, someone is a trustee of
(17:42):
this certain type of account?
Can I optimize a flow for IRAaccounts?
And what we've seen is that kindof feedback has led to really
allow it to be a lot moreself-serve.
You know, when we first startedoff with First City, we saw it
was kind of like 65, 70 percentof cases were still coming in
the branch and 30 percent ofcases would be coming via web.
(18:05):
And then last month, what we sawwas 95 percent are web-based,
right?
So these self-serve options arebecoming first because of that
feedback.
So we're seeing that members,their families, non-members,
inheritors, next of kin arefeeling a lot more comfortable
because we've been able tofine-tune this product as we've
gotten feedback from the FirstCity
SPEAKER_03 (18:27):
team.
You've developed over time, alot of expertise in this.
So, I mean, a relative of minedied recently, and the executor
asked me, how do I get a deathcertificate?
And I said, I don't have anyidea.
She didn't have any idea.
You probably know the answer tothat question.
I'm not asking you for it,because by now, I hope she's
(18:47):
figured it out.
SPEAKER_02 (18:49):
To
SPEAKER_03 (18:50):
people like us, this is like, I don't know, a death
certificate?
How do you get it?
SPEAKER_02 (18:55):
Yeah, and it's honestly, it shouldn't be...
One of the things we hope forRibbon to be is let people focus
on the things that matter intheir lives and let FinTechs
take care of the nitty gritties,the details, logistics.
So what I hope our company cando is just make it so that And
not everyone needs to knowexactly, specifically, oh, if I
(19:16):
need this kind of document, hereis where X, Y, and Z need to be
signed off, and here's how youget it notarized.
I want our company to get to apoint where we can just offload
a lot of that burden.
It's simple and it's intuitivewithin the flow, where to get
certain documentation, how toget it signed, get it signed
digitally, and be able toprovide it to their wonderful
institutions and be able to dothat.
And in order to be able toprovide that flow, you can
(19:38):
imagine...
Not just me, but the wholeRibbon team had to become
experts in this whole process,which we spent a lot of time in
the details.
Spending time with the depositoperations team at First City,
for example, this really gave usthe nitty-gritty and the details
of what are the different typesof documents you need, what are
the different flows, how do youcreate dynamic workflows.
(20:00):
So what we're trying to do isbecome experts so that members,
non-members, and charactersdon't have to be.
SPEAKER_03 (20:06):
Now, from the time you told Saeed and Ruben, okay,
it's a go.
How much time it lasts beforeyou were operational?
SPEAKER_00 (20:14):
It felt like lightning speed.
In fact, I remember the teamtelling me we're up and running.
I'm like, what?
Really?
So it was, do you remember,Saeed?
Was it weeks?
SPEAKER_02 (20:24):
Weeks.
I mean, it was weeks.
Credit to Nuv and the team.
I mean, that is, when you talkabout innovation, innovation
mindset, and you talk aboutagile and working agile, I would
say from contract signing togoing live was the fastest
implementation we've had.
And they were the firstinstitution in the entire
country to have theirinheritance flow automated
because of that.
SPEAKER_00 (20:44):
Yeah, I think part of that was, you know, that
we're small and being a smallershop, you know, we have 120 FTE.
We can be more agile.
We can be more nimble.
I used to work for a largerinstitution, about 5 billion
credit union, and it was alittle harder to get things done
there.
You know, from an innovationperspective, you had some
committees, you had some riskanalyses, some hierarchical
(21:07):
decision making.
And it was just like here waslike, let's go.
What do you know?
Let's do this.
What do you need?
You know, what are theroadblocks?
Let's let's plan it out, let'smeasure twice, cut once,
execute, and empower the team.
And so the team was awesome.
It was a very, very quick, easy,and I'll say painless
implementation.
SPEAKER_03 (21:29):
That is, see, that's why I love to have a credit
union on this show, because thefintech guy will always tell me,
oh, we implement this.
You know, you tell me on Monday,by Friday, it's up and running,
baby.
Core integration, everything.
It's all happening.
SPEAKER_00 (21:41):
We heard that, too.
You know, it's like, oh, youdon't need any IT resources on
your side.
And of course, our IT team was,yeah, right.
But I believe that it was allvery, very smooth and
streamlined.
SPEAKER_03 (21:52):
Well,
SPEAKER_00 (21:52):
you don't need
SPEAKER_03 (21:52):
core implementation for this, I don't think.
SPEAKER_02 (21:55):
It's helpful to have core, but you don't need it, is
what we always say.
It's always helpful to have corebecause you can automate a lot
of those processes, but youdon't need core to get started.
And again, credit to First Cityteam.
They were like, okay, well, ifwe don't need it right away,
let's start using the tool.
Let's see how it works.
And they really helped us tofire it.
SPEAKER_00 (22:13):
And that's really part of the philosophy here is,
you know, progress overperfection and kind of
continuous improvement.
Let's not look for everythingout of the box because then
everything becomes unattainableand maybe unachievable or gets
pushed to phase two or three,which never comes.
So let's just keep it simple.
Let's crawl, walk, run.
Let's make sure today is alittle better than yesterday.
(22:34):
And yesterday, you know,tomorrow is a little better than
today.
And just keep that mindset.
And I think that helped us getback to speed to action.
SPEAKER_03 (22:43):
As I indicated earlier, I think also this is a
wonderful test case becauseprobably no employee at your
credit union liked beinginvolved in this.
Collections is another thingwhere I'm a collections guy and
you say, I'm going to automatecollections.
I say, thank God.
(23:04):
I hate making those
SPEAKER_00 (23:08):
calls.
We don't want to go down thatpath.
But, you know, to your point,this actually allowed the humans
to do what we need the humans todo more of and better, which is
be empathetic.
So they didn't have to just get,you know, quagmired and process
and documents and get right intothe process flow that could be
(23:29):
automated and pushed off to therobots.
But, um, it actually allowed theteam more time to sit down and
have a conversation and justsay, you know, sorry, so sorry,
this happened, you know, uh,what can we do to help?
And we're here.
And I don't know if you knowmuch about us, if you're from
outside, et cetera, et cetera.
So it was, um, It was, I think,pushing the right processes to
(23:50):
the right automation andallowing the humans to elevate.
Nobody wants to shy away fromthese processes because we hire
empathetic people and we havewonderful people that care on
our staff.
And this just allows them toshine more in that space versus
have to jump into a processflow.
SPEAKER_03 (24:09):
Now, when a member dies, how typically does the
credit union learn about this?
Is that...
Apparently, Social Securitysometimes notifies, but I assume
there are other more directpaths.
SPEAKER_00 (24:24):
For us, historically, it's been the
beneficiary or the family memberthat contacts us, and that
starts the process.
So it's a very reactive processfor us.
I think the goal is to get alittle more proactive using
intelligence and data smarter,but maybe I'll defer to Saeed on
where we're headed there.
SPEAKER_02 (24:46):
Exactly.
I mean, so there's really a fewways that folks can learn about
it.
As Nev mentioned, the primaryways to the beneficiaries and
Mexicans, government agencies,Social Security Administration
being the most prominent, butother ones too, like VA, et
cetera, they will alert aninstitution, but generally only
if, for example, in the case ofSocial Security, only if they're
receiving Social Security intothe account.
(25:08):
So you can have Lots of cases,for example, like my dad was a
classic case with his creditunion.
He wasn't getting SocialSecurity payments into that
credit union, so they wouldn'thave known were it not for me
and my brother going andalerting that credit union that
he passed away.
So what we're doing now is we'reimplementing the largest master
file, what's called the limitedaccess death master file, in
combination with AI online scansfor things like obituaries,
(25:33):
things like social monitoringand web monitoring to be able to
proactively alert our customerscustomers that's the ones passed
away so uh first city will bethe first ones to to get that
kind of you know automation umprovided to them which is you
know that way you don't there'sa lot of I'll save all the
details but a lot of operationalinefficiencies if you don't know
that one of your members passedaway can be really costly and
(25:54):
burdensome and just so mucheasier for us to be able to say
hey we got news that somethingpassed away you should freeze
that account
SPEAKER_03 (26:00):
now tell me some of the operational inefficiencies
that arise
SPEAKER_02 (26:04):
Yeah, I can.
Yeah.
For a few, for example, is youhave like auto payments
continuing to go and those autopayments go out.
Right.
So someone passes away and thosepayments are continuing to go
out.
And then there's cases of fraud.
What if someone goes and triesto withdraw the money and the
account's actually frozen?
You're not allowed to have thathappen.
There's a lot of things that canhappen from a compliance and
(26:26):
regulatory or just from a fraudor cost perspective.
There's a lot of reasons why youjust want to freeze an account
when someone passes away.
It just makes things a lotsimpler and clearer.
So you don't have this back andforth.
It's very common for ourcustomers to tell us that they
had an account where they justhad to go and do something like
reclamation with treasurybecause social security payments
came in after someone passedaway.
UNKNOWN (26:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (26:50):
You mentioned fraud.
Nav, is that a concern for youat the credit union, that
they're fraudulent?
SPEAKER_00 (26:56):
Fraud is always a concern, and it just continues
to grow from a member-to-membertype fraud, but cyber threats as
well, social engineering,phishing.
Elderly are a target.
In these instances, sadly, thereare people that prey upon
beneficiaries and survivingfamily members, maybe not so
(27:20):
much from a fraud perspective,but just from a very
unscrupulous perspective interms of We can help and, you
know, we'll take care of it.
And then who knows, then thefraud happens.
So it's a concern.
It's always there.
It's omnipresent and it'sgrowing.
And sadly, sometimes technologyhas made that harder because
some of these are public recordsand some of these surviving
(27:43):
family members, beneficiariesare targets.
So we definitely want to makesure that that education to the
survivors and beneficiaries isthere so they understand, you
know, we are their officialpartner in this process and we
will make sure that we do it theright way um and uh and be wary
(28:04):
of you know others that may belurking
SPEAKER_03 (28:06):
now are are other institutions on this platform
SPEAKER_02 (28:13):
yes yes yes yes yes
SPEAKER_03 (28:16):
how many
SPEAKER_02 (28:17):
We're getting close to double digits now, so we're
going to share more for end ofthe year, but it's been
unbelievably exciting being thefirst one and for Citi being the
first one to join with us lessthan a year ago now.
We've only been up with them forsix months, and thanks to that
partnership, thanks to thatfeedback, and thanks to those
use cases, We've gotten a lotmore interest from other credit
(28:41):
unions, other financialinstitutions across the country
who say this is not somethingthat we should be spending
full-time resources on.
Having a bad experience forinheritors is not what we want.
Being part of the Great WealthTransfer is something that
aligns with our strategic goals.
So, Robert, I believe the firsttime you and I chatted, more
than a year ago now, we wereessentially just a few lines of
(29:03):
code at that point.
And, you know, a promise.
Oh, you lied
SPEAKER_03 (29:06):
to me.
You lied
SPEAKER_02 (29:08):
to me.
No, it was live.
It was live.
It was just, you know, no onewas using it.
And the first city wasn't usingit and no one else was using it.
And then here we are now beingable to say that, you know, we
process thousands of inheritanceclaims a month.
And we're really excited aboutthat.
SPEAKER_03 (29:24):
Yeah.
And as I'm sure you're findingout, of the way credit unions
adopt new technology is if youcall me, I probably don't take
the call.
If I'm talking to Nav at theCalifornia League and he says,
you know, I got this great thingthat's really handling this
whole problem that we've had.
I'll say, tell me more and giveme the guy's number or email
(29:46):
address.
SPEAKER_00 (29:47):
That's right.
That's right.
I have one...
Are you saying we're lemmingsor?
No, no,
SPEAKER_03 (29:50):
that is considered the most valid endorsement.
SPEAKER_00 (29:57):
Of course, I'm being facetious, but you're absolutely
right.
I mean, we listen to othercohort and colleagues that are
doing great things and we trustthat, right?
So there's a high level oftrust.
It is a very small industry.
Everyone knows everybody.
It is very incestuous.
But having a proven use casebeats any firm's marketing and
(30:22):
pitch, you know, as far as we'reconcerned.
I used to think we were slow,you know, credit unions are just
slow to adopt and makedecisions.
I think it's more that we'rejust more deliberate.
SPEAKER_02 (30:33):
I really agree with that.
And the number one piece ofadvice we got as a fintech when
entering was find the rightfirst partners, because A
reputation precedes folks inthis industry.
And that if you have the rightreference partner, it will
change everything for youbecause folks will know that
they have a reputation of beingdeliberate, innovative,
member-focused, et cetera.
(30:55):
And if they can vouch for you,it'll do more.
As exactly like Nav said, it'lldo more than any marketing
campaign will ever do.
And that has been so true forus.
It's just the difference betweenme saying, I promise you this
will be really good versus Navsaying, this is something that
we would like for our creditunion as change the trajectory
of our business.
SPEAKER_03 (31:12):
And he's saying he's actually making some money doing
this.
It's not just all cost, whichis, you know, I'm a credit union
executive, and I hear that myinterest level goes way up.
Yeah, it's a lot of fintechs arepure cost, and that's no fun.
SPEAKER_00 (31:28):
There has to be an ROI, though, you know, Robert,
with no matter, you know, whatmembers...
investment money we spend.
And it could be, like I said, acombination of revenue growth
and or expense reduction and oryou know, employee satisfaction,
member satisfaction, all thatcomes into play.
(31:49):
But we deliberately looked atRibbon as, you know, what is the
return on this expenditure?
This is our members' money.
And there was a use case there,and we're starting to realize
that.
As I said, I believe the best isyet to come.
We have not leveraged the toolas much as we need to.
Quite frankly, and Saeed knowsthis, we haven't really launched
(32:10):
this product to the membership.
It's been six months.
We've been trying to get theprocesses right and the training
and all of that put into play.
So we're just kind of funnelinga lot of our members to the
Ribbon platform, be it if theycome in in person or pick up the
phone, which is great.
But imagine when we really startto market this as a
(32:32):
differentiator.
That really hasn't even startedyet.
So I just see tons of potentialhere for us.
SPEAKER_03 (32:38):
I've liked this product since I heard about it,
really.
It's fantastic.
It really does alleviate a lotof aggravation that heirs are
feeling at a time when theydon't really need this
aggravation.
And in many cases, bills arecoming in that have to be paid,
and they just as soon pay it outof the estate.
(33:00):
But the money's frozen.
It's like, what?
I can't touch the money?
Now, Saeed, first city aside,what do you see the cost
structure to a credit unionbeing.
I mean, I imagine Nav's anintelligent guy.
He probably got a pretty gooddeal.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (33:20):
Yeah, he actually framed it perfectly.
We want to do it based off ofROI and business case.
We actually felt that from thebeginning.
We tried in our very early daysto kind of just go out there and
wing it.
I'll tell you right now, thatfails.
And it fails miserably.
Very quickly, we realized youneed a business case, you need
an ROI.
And what we do is based off of afew factors.
(33:42):
How do you value memberexperience?
How many resources do you havededicated to this process right
now?
So operational efficiency,whether or not we can reduce
full-time hours on thisparticular workflow.
So you can put them on somethingthat's higher ROI, for example.
So operational efficiency is abig one.
And then deposit retention,using those three pillars, we
say, okay, you fall into thistier of pricing.
(34:03):
So usually, you know, the assetsthat you have, the number of
members that you have, and theamount of time that you spent
per deceased account, also knownas like, how many resources do
you have dedicated for depositoperations on deceased account
workflows will put you in somekind of tier.
And that tier for us is allabout what can make sure that
Ribbon can cover its costs andscale the business.
(34:25):
But most importantly, can weactually really provide value
way above and beyond theinvestment it takes in terms of
monthly costs when it comes toRibbon?
So we tier it.
based off of the use case, thebusiness case.
And then that way we take anindividualized approach to
pricing and cost.
And so far, what we're seeing isour target is that for every
(34:46):
dollar that you're putting inRibbon, you should be getting at
least$2 back.
That's really what we wannashoot for.
So we really wanna make surethat you have a very, very
strong business case.
SPEAKER_03 (34:55):
What's the size of the biggest credit that's using
Ribbon?
SPEAKER_02 (34:59):
We have, I guess, depends on how you mean size.
SPEAKER_03 (35:02):
Assets, assets.
SPEAKER_02 (35:04):
Yeah, 5 billion.
So, you know, we're startingto...
We're relevant, I would argue,for any credit union at any
size.
You know, if you're$50 million,$100 million,$1 billion,$5
billion,$20 billion and beyond,you know, everyone goes through
this.
And so right now, what we'reseeing is most of our customers
fall in somewhere between$500million to under$6 billion.
(35:27):
And we hope to, yeah, to offerthis service to anyone.
SPEAKER_03 (35:31):
Yeah, I would say once you have$500 million, you
can...
probably afford this service andit will pay for itself and
reduce staff time, I think.
It's
SPEAKER_00 (35:43):
a...
Say, it's a very scalable, veryscalable tool.
So that's very exciting to us aswe're planning to grow.
SPEAKER_03 (35:50):
Now, have you, Say, you must have regionalized this
product too.
In other words, death andestates in Virginia are
different from death and estatesin California.
I don't know how, I hope youknow how.
SPEAKER_02 (36:07):
Unfortunately, very familiar with all 50 states and
territories and also whathappens if someone passes away
abroad.
And we've had to create a systemthat is agnostic because, you
know, First City is not going tojust have members that are in
California.
You know, if someone passesaway, they might have a death
certificate that comes fromOhio.
(36:28):
So how do you deal with thosecases?
So we have dynamic workflowsbased off of that.
And we created a system that asnow said, is intended to scale,
is intended to be agnostic, andis intended to continue to
provide value-added resourcesand value-added services.
So we get really excitedthinking, OK, if you have an
agnostic system that can applyto anywhere in the country or
anywhere in the world, well,what does it look like if you
(36:50):
send notes or flowers to anyonein the world?
What does it look like if youstart giving that member-first
experience to anyone?
What does it look like when youstart offering other kinds of
services?
So we wanted to start off withthe architecture and the
platform being neutral and notjust contained to one state or
region because we knew thatwould allow us to scale.
And we also knew that ourcustomers like First City were
(37:11):
going to need that from thestart.
SPEAKER_03 (37:13):
Then earlier on, you seemed to indicate that success
with Ribbon would pave the wayto more fintechs coming into
First City.
What kinds of fintechs are youlooking at?
SPEAKER_00 (37:27):
Yeah, you know, when I say pave the way for more
fintechs, it's really paved theway for us to be able to, you
know, engage and partner andally with various other, you
know, providers that aretackling some very meaty topics
and issues in our businesstoday.
You know, so what we are doingis looking at all incumbents, if
(37:52):
you will, and on the lendingfront, we've been engaging with
several companies you know,vendors that are helping us now,
FinTechs.
We're also looking at them froman operational perspective as we
start to kind of now dabbleinto, you know, artificial
intelligence agents andworkflows of which, you know,
(38:15):
Ribbon is a very specializedworkflow in that sense.
But again, the technology now isjust, you know, such a game
changer where we have even alending process, for example,
where it was a very manual,labor-intensive, follow-up,
back-and-forth type of a processflow can be severely automated
(38:38):
now for both membersatisfaction, employee
satisfaction, get the people outof the jobs that do robot work,
and ultimately efficiency andscalability as well.
So we are looking at alldifferent fronts of a that have
done, quite frankly, a muchbetter job than the entire
generic credit union has done bytackling very specific issues
(39:03):
pain points and issues and usecases.
So it's really becomingenterprise-wide, even member
fraud.
I mean, we're engaging all sortsof fintechs now to help us be
more predictive and prescriptivemarketing.
We're partnering with a ton offintechs that are helping us to
get the right products to theright members at the right time
or have the right conversationswith the right members at the
(39:25):
right time in the way they wantto be conversed with.
Prior to these fintechpartnerships, we weren't able to
do or build all of that.
We can't build all of that.
We're a small-ish credit union.
I have to be careful when I saya$900 million credit union is a
small credit union.
Some of my$100 millioncolleagues get very frustrated
(39:46):
when I say stuff like that.
But I think the$5 billion shops,the$10 billion shops still have
issues around these areas andsiloed processes and manual
processes and redundant andinefficient processes, et
cetera.
And so we have to buy, we haveto ally.
And I think our successfulpartnership with Ribbon has
(40:07):
given a lot more comfort to myteam that we can do this and we
can see benefits, you know, fromdoing it.
Now, we were involved with someother fintechs prior to Saeed,
but this one was just such atremendous use case with such a
great story that goes around itthat the team has really rallied
(40:28):
around that.
SPEAKER_03 (40:29):
All you have to do is tell the employees, hey,
These fintechs aren't like ourcore provider.
I know you hate the coreprovider.
Everybody hates the coreprovider.
These guys are much nicer guys.
SPEAKER_00 (40:40):
I don't know how they do it because I see Saeed
everywhere.
He's all over the place.
I think there's a clone or atwin somewhere.
It's AI, man.
SPEAKER_03 (40:52):
There's six of him.
SPEAKER_00 (40:53):
He's
SPEAKER_03 (40:53):
doing three podcasts right now.
SPEAKER_00 (40:58):
I wouldn't be surprised.
SPEAKER_03 (41:05):
Before we go, think hard about how you can help
support this podcast so we cando more interviews with more
thoughtful leaders in the creditunion world.
What we're trying to figure outhere in these podcasts is what's
next for credit unions.
What can they do to really,really, really make a difference
in the financial scene?
Can't all be mega banks, can it?
(41:26):
It's my hope it won't all bemedical banks.
It'll always be a place forcredit unions.
That's what we're discussinghere.
So figure out how you can help.
Get in touch with me.
This is rjmcgarvey at gmail.com.
Robert McGarvey again.
That's rjmcgarvey at gmail.com.
Get in touch.
We'll figure out a way that youcan help.
We need your support.
(41:47):
We want your support.
We thank you for your support.
The CU2.0 Podcast.
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