Seth Brickman’s career includes the US Navy (remember Top Gun? That was his motivator). Then he landed at Microsoft, he co-founded a startup Nicolette which builds tools to help parents make informed decisions about their baby’s health, then he was at Amazon where he earned a patent involving Alexa and the content delivered to its screen.
Now he is at QCash, a CUSO created by Washington State Employees Credit Union (hear CU 2.0 Podcast #56 with past QCash CEO Ben Morales).
Why QCash? In the podcast Brickman tells why but the short version is that he had reached a point in his life where he wanted to do a lot of good and he joined QCash because it seemed to him to be the vehicle that could make that happen.
Listen to this section of the podcast multiple times. Take notes. You want to get highly talented techies into your organization. Brickman tells how.
At QCash, his dreams are big. The CUSO presently serves 50 credit unions. His goal is to double that number by year end.
Partly it’s that Brickman has tweaked QCash’s product messaging. It no longer refers to itself as an alternative to payday lending. Now it’s about helping members through what QCash calls life events.
Don’t think QCash is abandoning the people it was created to help. It isn’t. The QCash focus remains making loans – oftentimes to individuals who might not qualify for traditional lending products – to help members deal with life events, from a blown car transmission to false teeth.
What’s exciting about QCash is that its loans do not involve a traditional application. It connects to the core and that gives it ample insight into this member who wants a loan.
Brickman also is expanding the QCash toolbox – for instance there now is an emergency response loan that will let a participating credit initiate lending to community members after a natural disaster – an earthquake, fire, even Covid-19 – literally within minutes of the event. How cool is that? The credit union can legitimately call itself a financial first responder.
What could be more in the credit union spirit than that?
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