CU2.0 Podcast Episode 133 Karan Bhalla CU Rise on Data Analytics

Sit back and listen. Over the next 45 minutes what you will hear is how a data geek thinks because Karan Bhalla, CEO of CU Rise, will show you.

I did not ask Bhalla to do a demo.  This just is what he does.

Show him a pile of data - it could be anything: from your Safeway grocery receipts for last year through a credit union's auto loan portfolio - and Bhalla will begin sifting, searching for the meaning in the data.

Think like a quant, he says, and quant is Wall Street slang for a math maestro.  Quants gave us securitized mortgages - "we had no idea how much people would lie," a quant who played a role in developing that instrument told me some years back.

But a quant like Bhalla can help a credit union figure out how to make more and better car loans and, get this, a quant can even help a credit union figure out which borrowers who are veering into default are most likely to pay up if contacted by the credit union.

Don't miss Bhalla's CU Compare which lets a credit union compare its performance metrics to a competitors or a group of competitors.  At what price? Free for the basic service (add-ons with fees are available but Bhalla says the basic version is very rich).

Bhalla has been in data analytics for many years and, he says, the biggest change is that nowadays credit unions of just about all sizes want to make data analytics work for them.  Used to be only the big institutions had an interest. Now institutions of all sizes recognize that data is what paves the path to prosperity.

In this podcast Bhalla offers tips on how to get started but he also talks about how to go ever deeper.

Quants rule - you will be a believer before the podcast ends.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

CU2.0 Podcast Episode 132 Ray Crouse CEO Parsons Federal Credit Union: An Endangered Species?

 Ask Ray Crouse, CEO of the roughly $250 million in assets Parsons Federal Credit Union, if he is helming an endangered institution and be ready to get an earful.

Crouse well knows the NCUA data that show big credit unions growing (ones over $1 billion in assets) while little credit unions, and Parsons counts as small in many metrics, are struggling for air.

But Crouse does not see Parsons as endangered.

A few years ago, Crouse and the board explored how big Parsons FCU needed to be to be secure and the number that came back was $350 million.  That is now the five year growth target and it obviously falls far short of the $1 billion minimum size some seers throw out for credit union survival.

But Crouse is confident the number will works fine for Parsons. 

A big part of the reason is that Parsons is an unusual institution. It still primarily serves a single SEG (engineering company Parsons), it has just two branches (Pasadena, CA and Centreville VA), it has just three ATMs (but it belongs to CO-OP's ATM network and also reimburses members for any fees incurred in using out of network ATMs), and member appearances at branches are rare. It's an institution that went online and digital before Covid and that's because the bulk of the members are engineers and people accustomed to being around engineers.

Parsons has just 22 employees.  Some credit union half its size have twice as many employees.

In this podcast you will hear why Crouse is confident of survival and you will also hear how to well serve members in a contactless context.

There's a grumble about NCUA's demands on board members.

And Crouse also tells that Parsons is open to a merger but is in no rush and, first and foremost, needs to find a group that will be compatible with the Parsons engineering employees.

This could have been a woe is me, downbeat discussion about managing a credit union in an era of vanishing loan interest rates. It's anything but.  Crouse is upbeat. You will be too when you listen.

Want more Crouse? Listen to the CU2.0 Mastermind podcast - he's one of the guests.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

CU2.0 Podcast Episode 131 Lee Wetherington, director of strategic insight at Jack Henry, on Cores and Your Credit Union Tomorrow, Trends 3

 Lee Wetherington, director of strategic insight at Jack Henry, the big core maker (Symitar is theirs), has a picture in his head of the path to success for tomorrow's credit unions.  Picture yourself as a platform, he says, and, yes, a platform company is Amazon, for instance, and what makes Amazon a platform is that it creates an environment where many other vendors can also sell and consumers in turn can reap the benefits of choice and keen prices.

How's that apply to credit unions? Wetherington sees the credit union as a platform where the best, most useful finech tools are aggregated to best serve an institution's members. The credit unions with the best tools win.

A necessary ingredient in this equation: core systems that provide an open environment that allows for reasonably easy and inexpensive integration of third party tools and, yes, some core providers maintained rather closed universes. But that just won't work going forward, insists Wetherington.

Buckle up because Wetherington has more big ideas to throw your way. He says, for instance, that early in 2021 Google will unveil a powerful suite of banking tools that will be free to credit unions to offer to their members. But he calls it a Faustian bargain. That's because what Google wants is the data of the members and although Google says it will not ask credit unions for access to the data, it has another route to getting it. In the podcast, Wetherington tells how.

There's also a provocative discussion of cores in the cloud.  Accept that that is the future and, actually, it's better that way for most institutions.

By the way, Wetherington is adamant that core systems are a lasting part of the financial services universe. But he tweaks that by explaining that nowadays cores come in many different forms, with many different capabilities.  

It's a wide ranging podcast.  Hop aboard for a voyage into tomorrow and your credit union.

In this podcast mention is made of a 2000 article I wrote for MITs Technology Review magazine. There's a link to the interviews with Google's founders in the show notes.

There's also a link to a 2012 article I wrote on Google and its introduction at the 2012 Money2020 show of a predecessor to the banking tools it now is about to unveil. 

A third link is to a Google video on its banking tools.  Watch it.

A fourth link is to a story I wrote on neo bank Lili.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It's a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto