CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 179 Bryce Deeney of equipifi and the Rise of BNPL

 BNPL.  Remember that because you soon will be using that abbreviation often.

It stands for Buy Now, Pay Later and it is just about the hottest trend in payments at retail.

Today's US market is small, maybe $50 billion but forecasts show the BNPL market crashing into the many hundreds of billions of dollars by the middle of the present decade.  And then the numbers start to get dizzily huge.

Why so much interest?  Oldtimers will recall that BNPL was a staple of 1950s retail but as credit cards proliferated it receded into the background.  But now it is again hot and that's because it speaks to the purchasing needs and desires of Gen Z and young Millennials.  Why don't they just slap down a Visa card and put it on credit? The advantage of BNPL to them is that they know the total cost of purchase when they make it.  The full payments amount, spread out over an agreed upon number of months, is there to see.

Pay the minimum on a credit card purchase and suddenly the total amount paid can vault much, much higher.

So the younger generations are hopping aboard BNPL which, right now, is largely used for consumer purchases of a few hundred dollars to maybe a few thousand.

Right now it's mainly fintechs that are playing hard in this space.

But Scottsdale AZ based equipifi is a fintech that wants to enable credit unions in particular along with some banks to play in this space.

In this podcast with co-founder and CEO Bryce Deeney you will hear about equipifi's secret sauce which is software that can approve and fund a BNPL loan at retail in under a minute.

No application is required. No FICO score is checked.

The basis for the loan is knowledge of the history of the member's checking (sharedraft) account and insight into how much surplus money generally is in the account.  So that's a solid basis for forecasting that this consumer can in fact handle this monthly payment.

In the podcast Deeney tells in detail exactly how equipifi works along with how it is integrated into the core.

Any credit union that wants more members under, say, thirty years of age needs to listen and take notes.  

Keep listening and you will hear the equipifi has plans to roll out a BNPL service for SMBs too.  How cool is that?

Listen up.

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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

CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 178 Cameron Madill on Credit Union Websites and Much More

 Be bold.

That is the loud message from Cameron Madill, CEO of PixelSpoke, an Oregon headquartered marketing agency that primarily serves credit unions.  He also hosts "The Remarkable Credit Union" podcast.  

Too many credit unions simply want to fit in, he says.  

Dare to be different and that just may get you noticed.

That's just one take-away from this podcast - there are many more.

Want to know if your website is good? Madill tells us the main way credit union websites go bad. Use it as a checklist to judge your own.

Do you do member testing of your site? You probably will want to after listening to ths podcas because Madill tells the enormous benefits of testing with even a handful of members.

He also tells why credit unions need to embrace storytelling in their marketing, a topic he has written about for CUInsight.  

Buckle up because he also tells why PixelSpoke is a worker owned cooperative and why it is a certified B Corp. The latter is a credentialing program that designated businesses that put greater emphasis on purpose, not just profit.

As for worker owned cooperatives. that's a comparatively small slice of the cooperative pie in the US but it also is fast growing. Hear why PixelSpoke now is owned by its workers.  

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

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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

CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 177 Amber Callahan VP of Marketing at 1st Advantage FCU and Kristin Harrison Web Strategies on Digital Marketing

 What you don't know about digital marketing can be your undoing. That is 2021 fact.

For some years credit union c-suite occupants have shrugged off digital marketing - it's just for kids, our members skew old.  Maybe that was true (maybe it wasn't as true as the c-suiters believed) but what now has become indisputable in our pandemic era is that digital is here and it has become a significant part of just about every life.

That includes credit union members.

Where's a credit union to get started in digital marketing? That's what you will hear about in this podcast with Amber Callahan, VP of marketing at 1st Advantage FCU in Virginia, and Kristin Harrison, director of business development at Web Strategies, also in Virginia.

They have had a multi-year journey together and you will learn how to get started in digital marketing and how to go to next, higher levels.

Do note: this is pretty much a tech free podcast.  There's no need to have a techie at your side for this one.

And accept the reality: we have entered the zone where tech is what matters. To quote the New York Times about Google and Facebook: "these tech companies are rich and powerful because they are the biggest sellers of advertising in the world."

Digital already accounts for more than half of global ad spend.  Many billions of dollars get spent on digital advertising.  There are good reasons for that. You will hear about that in this podcast.

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

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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

CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 176 Vizo and Aptys on the Reinvention of the Corporate Credit Union

 If you had asked me ten years ago what the future was for corporate credit unions I probably would have said: they have one?

There were reasons for cynicism: You remember Wescorp, right? There are links in the show notes if you need memory refreshing.

But - and this is a huge but - there are literally thousands of small credit unions that needed and still need a corporate credit union to provide crucial assistance in a range of functions, from payments (especially contemporary ultra fast money movement) to short term liquidity.

I covered the corporate credit union beat for a few years at Credit Union Times and, while I cannot say the sector every thrilled me, little by little I grew to see corporates as essential in today's credit union universe.  Were the credit union sector to shrink down to a few hundred behemoths corporates likely would vanish.

But in a world with 5000+ credit unions, many minuscule, the need for corporates remains.

Have they modernized? Are they part of 21st century financial services or are they more of a curio shop of dusty processes and tools?

Today you hear the answer.

That's because in this podcast you will hear from Eric Dotson, EVP at fintech Aptys, and Jaime Agonstino, Vizo’s Director of Marketing and Business Development.  

Vizo is the product of a merger of Mid-Atlantic Corporate Credit Union and First Carolina Corporate Credit Union.

Aptys enters this picture because it was tasked with modernizing Vizo's payments technology, which had been something of a rat's nest of tangled threads from the two merged in partners.  The tools just would not suffice in what is becoming a realtime payments world, Vizo knew it, and so it brought in Aptys to produce something new, bigger, better.

It was a multi-year process. Hear the details here.

Along the way you will also hear mention that some other corporates - Alloya and Catalyst - are doing similar with their payments. 

The message is plain: corporate credit unions are making changes to seek to stay relevant.

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

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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

CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 175 MBFS CEO Mark Ritter Tells How to Make Member Business Lending Work

 Some credit unions are making lots of very profitable member business loans.  Most aren't.  In fact, by Mark Ritter's count, maybe 300 of the nation's credit unions are genuine players in this business. The rest are dabblers, he says.

That's a shock because in the last couple years there has been a stampede of credit unions eager to get into member business lending. The reasons are obvious.  There has been an avalanche of deposits that need to be put to work.  Meantime, both the home mortgage and car loan markets are sputtering, definitely as far as credit unions go.

The eyes in the credit union c-suite shift to local businesses and the question gets asked: how do we lend to them?

Ritter, longtime CEO of Pennsylvania based CUSO Member Business Financial Services, which specializes in member business lending, knows the reality.

About 80 credit unions are active with MBFS - 13 are owners - and they range in size from tiny to over $1 billion in assets.  Ritter pegs the MBFS sweet spot as institutions in the $300 million to $1 billion range but, he says, MBFS has no size limits, big or small.

MBFS in many ways provides credit unions with turnkey service. That means they prospect for borrowers, negotiate the terms, service the loan, and do pretty much everything except provide the capital to lend.

Want to know why member business lending initiatives sputter at many credit unions? Also want to know who not to hire to make those loans?

Ritter has the answers in this wide ranging podcast that is a must listen for any credit union exec who wants to get into member business lending - or wants to do better at it.

Listen up.

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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

 

CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 174 Tyler Gillies Debtsy on 21st Century Debt Collection

 What are the chief tools of old school debt collectors? Phone and US mail.  Two problems. Nobody answers the phone when it's an unknown number (do you?) and US mail, increasingly, is tossed unread because all the important, urgent stuff comes via email.

Enter Debtsy, a fintech that is pioneering 21st century collection techniques that are kinder, gentler and - above all - digital. The chief Debtsy tools are email and its website and, in the process, Debtsy also uses data to sift through charged off debts to zero in on those borrowers who have both the means and the willingness to repay.

A lot of debtors have neither. Debtsy seeks to focus in on the borrowers where the potential for return is real. 

That approach looks vastly more effective than the old school techniques.  It also is highly cost efficient because much of it is automated.

You will hear all about 21st century debt collection in this podcast with Tyler Gillies, Debtsy's director of operations.

Debtsy of course knows that most credit unions seek to have a positive image in their communities and so it avoids the bruising, demeaning tactics of at least some debt collectors.

What size credit unions will Debtsy work with?  Pretty much any size. Gillies says clients range from $10 billion+ behemoths to small credit unions.  In the podcast he also details exactly how a credit union starts with Debtsy, what the costs are, and how long it takes for Debtsy to get busy trying to collect. Spoiler: the whole process usually is very fast.

Sure, we know talking charged off debt is a something of a bummer - but this nonetheless is a surprisingly upbeat podcast.

Listen up.

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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

CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 173 Alexey Krasnoriadtsev BankingON on Bank Dora, Mobile Banking Now and Love

 Early in this podcast you will realize that  Alexey Krasnoriadtsev is a different kind of tech CEO.  For starters, this is a podcast where you will not hear much - probably nothing - that sends you to Google to look up words you don't understand. But the bigger difference is that this is a tech CEO who talks about why it's important that users of technology feel loved by their tech, that credit unions and other financial institutions do right by their users (and Alexey backs that up by refusing to help efforts that don't align with that philosophy), and who admits a lot of FI tech is blah - and he tells why that is so.

You know his work.  In podcast 172 you heard about Bank Dora, the innovative neo-bank birthed by a credit union.  BankingON worked on that project.

The core BankingON pursuit is creating new mobile banking apps and that means tools that do what the users want (rather than what the vendors and FIs want which is the norm).

Be prepared to be surprised, often in this podcast.  Especially if you are a CIO or CTO who knows how fintech execs talk.   

Alexey talks about his frustrations, his hopes, his dreams and why at day's end he is a happy guy.

You didn't expect to hear that, did you?

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