CU2.0 Podcast Episode 44 Wendell "Bucky" Sebastian - a Credit Union Life

A state regulator in Illinois. General counsel at NCUA. A co-founder of Callahan Associates. Longtime CEO at GTE Financial.  Head of the National Credit Union Foundation. Guess who.

Meet Wendell Sebastian, call him Bucky.

His has been an extraordinary career and you will like him. For two reasons. He is a vocal credit union cheerleader. And he deeply believes that credit unions - because they serve members, not shareholders - will triumph, that credit unions are absolutely the best financial institution for just about all of us.

Bucky doesn't shy away from a fight.  Suggest to him that it is high tech credit unions that will prevail and he is quick to argue that in point of fact it is high touch institutions that have been winning.  Of course they feature needed tech but what puts a credit union in the winner's circle is high touch. He cites Navy Federal as a classic for instance and in this podcast reviews the numbers to make his case.

He is a walking history book too.  Why did credit unions shrink in number from 23,000 40 years ago to maybe 5500 today? Because it was in the plan, says Bucky, and in large part a result of policies put into place when he worked at NCUA in the early 1980s.

Isn't a shrinking number of institutions a sign credit unions are dying? "Never focus on the institutions, it's about the members," says Bucky who points to the extraordinary growth in member numbers.

In this podcast you'll hear what killed off savings and loans and why credit unions escaped their fate, why community banks may be next to expire (and what may keep them alive), and the big advantage credit union CEOs have over their peers at banks.

What advantage? That they can manage the institution with a eye on the horizon, not on the present quarter, says Bucky.  Managing to the quarter, he insists, is a recipe for disaster.

You want a feel good podcast? You want this one - and you definitely will learn a lot of history in the process.  Related podcasts include the Jim Blaine Marathon and Cliff Rosenthal on CDFIs.

Listen here to the Bucky podcast.




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

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 43 Caroline Willard Cornerstone

Cannabis banking. Data breaches.  Taxation of credit unions. The disappearance of small credit unions.  The rise of $10 billion+ credit union behemoths. Welcome to the world of Caroline Willard, CEO of the Cornerstone League and, before that, she spent a decade at Co-Op in senior marketing slots.

What do credit unions need to do to survive? What do leagues need to do? Willard offers candid and also optimistic thoughts about these life and death questions.

She also offers insights into what leagues can do to help small credit unions survive in an age of ever more complex and expensive compliance requirements.

And she challenges credit unions to be a bit more like Rocket Mortgage - and if you want to continue to write home loans you will pay heed.

Pay heed too to her thoughts on how taxation of credit unions just might be an existential threat to the industry.

Related podcasts in this series include the two-pack on cannabis banking, Teresa Freeborn on CUNA's $100 million credit union awareness campaign, and Joe Bergeron of the Vermont League and Pat Conway of the Pennsylvania - NJ league

Listen up here.



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

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 42 Walt Laskos, CCUA, on Credit Unions Fighting Elder Fraud

Elder fraud is big business. The FBI calculates last year's losses at over $700 million and involving two million seniors.

That's a lot of pain.

The scams are predictable. “Your grandson has been arrested. He’s in jail in Memphis.  You need to bail him out. It’s dangerous. Send $5000 in gift cards.”

There are variations. But the usual drill is that a relative has fallen into trouble and the senior can be the hero.

Horrible.

But now credit unions are entering this scene.

Here to tell us what credit unions are doing is Walt Laskos, senior vice president, strategic communications at the Cooperative Credit Union Association, a multi state league covering Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware.

Leagues - usually - spend the bulk of their time lobbying.

But CCUA is putting a lot of energy into fighting elder fraud and helping credit unions to do likewise.

It’s also very, very good PR for credit unions, says Laskos.  That’s not why CCUA does it but the side benefit is really.

Listen up as he talks about what CCUA is doing, with whom, and what the community reaction has been.

Hint: think very very positive

Listen up here.





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

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 41 Sherri Davidoff on Cyber Insecurities and You

Put phishing emails in front of credit union employees and how many will fall for them and cough up sensitive info? 20 to 60% will get conned.

And that can be costly to a credit union, both in terms of money and reputation.

Enter BrightWise, a Des Moines Iowa cyber training company created by Sherri Davidoff, CEO of LMG Security, and the Iowa Credit Union League’s holding company Affiliates Management Company (AMC).

After training, said Davidoff, the number of employees who fall for the phishing con tumbles below 10%.

What BrightWise will focus on, said Davidoff, are fun, short videos - think maybe five minutes - than an employee can absorb at his/her leisure.

Smarter employees are critical because how hackers work has changed, said Davidoff. “It’s no longer 13-year-olds in their moms’ basements that are hacking us; it’s organized crime groups all over the world,” Davidoff shared with NBC’s Today Show.

“People tend to think cybersecurity happens in the IT department,” added Davidoff. “Front-line staff are under constant assault from crooks and their automated robots, look-alike communications and other crafty tricks. We have to arm employees with knowledge, but also give them the tactics they need to sidestep cyber sneak attacks.”

Want more details on the Paul Allen scam? Read this.

Listen up to this podcast for a fast overview of the cyber threats credit unions face - and what they can, indeed must, do to protect themselves and their members.

Listen here






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

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 40 the Jim Blaine Marathon

At 30 he took over as CEO of State Employees' Credit Union in North Carolina.  That was 1979.  Come 2016 and he retired. SECU had grown to $33 billion - and it had 256 branches and 5800 employees.

That's the Jim Blaine story and here he sits for a marathon interview, the longest in this podcast's history.

It's worth the hour. Make time.

Blaine starts out by questioning the wave of mergers that is now rocking the world of credit unions. Why not just liquidate the institution and give every member $1000?

Keep listening and you realize he's not exactly for doing that. In fact he denounces the loss of a few hundred credit union charters yearly.

What he is actually doing is highlighting a reality that, typically, those mergers accomplish just about nothing. The resulting institution, a bit bigger, is in fact no more competitive.

Blaine also worries about the loss of local institutions, where in many credit unions all decisions - including the trivial - get made at corporate HQ.

Is there in fact a future for credit unions?

Maybe. Maybe not.  Blaine highlights a strategy for keeping credit unions relevant. But he frets that many may not heed the message.

Are you listening?

Listen up to Blaine here.

Related podcasts mention in this interview include Bill Bynum, Maine Harvest. Teresa Freeborn, and Cliff Rosenthal.



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

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 39 Futurist Chris Skinner

Consumers don't want a digital bank. They want digital banking. That's a building block belief of futurist-blogger Chris Skinner who has become a regular on the conference speaking circuit.

Even though what he has to say will upset many financial services executives.

That's because he thinks many are going about becoming a digital banking prover all wrong.

It's not about offering a mobile banking app.  It's about a reconfiguration of the whole service delivery system.

That system was created to distribute paper (think checks).

What's needed today is a system to distribute data (bits and bytes).

Skinner relates that one FI that gets it often asks itself before embarking on a project, what would Jeff do?

Jeff who?

Bezos, said Skinner.

And that's a step closer to really thinking digitally.

Here's the money question: Can credit unions keep up with the big money center banks when it comes to the race to digitalization?

Skinner has good news here. His answer is yes. His answer also is that the comparatively small size of credit unions is a plus. A lean institution is that much easier to put on a different course.

In this podcast Skinner tells how. He also tells a lot about what China has done to create a digital country - and it's inspiring stuff.

Listen up here.

Related podcasts include Ron Shevlin, Brett King and Thomas Frey - for more doses of futurist thought.





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

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 38 Futurist Thomas Frey on Credit Unions Tomorrow

Will your credit union be in business in 2029?

The question is not academic and it's exactly the kind of question futurist Thomas Frey chews on.

We first heard him at Co-Op's Think '18 (video here) and the conversation picks up where that presentation left off: what's the future of the car business?

And know that the answer directly impacts credit unions.

Know too that Frey in this conversation explores the future shape of banking -  by 2025, he says, the biggest banks will be tech companies.

He also delves into the vanishing branch and what this means for financial institutions. There now are 90,000 branches. But they are disappearing at a rate of 1000 per year.  And then what?

The emergence of "banking deserts" - and the opportunities that may create for financial institutions - is another Frey topic.

So is the emergence of autonomous cars and what that may mean for credit unions.

One fact emerges from this conversation: the banking industry tomorrow will look very, very different from today's.

Will you still be in the picture?

Listen to the Frey podcast here.




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

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