It’s the Credit Union podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the thirteenth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more. Today’s topic is talking about the real credit union mission.

Welcome to AI, Part 1 in the CU2.0 Podcast series.  Next week we’ll post AI, Part 2, an exploration of voice and AI. This week looks at a company focused on text and AI. Both are products of the DCU Fintech Innovation Lab in Boston – a podcast about that here.

Either way, great stuff is happening that you need to know about to stay current.

Why? It’s because a lot of credit union work is mundane, tedious, boring really. It needs doing, no question, but how best?

Enter Coalesce. The company’s tagline says it all:  “AI software that automates tedious work for financial services.”

You’re not interested because credit unions are special? Coalesce is in the DCU Fintech Innovation Lab in Boston – hear the podcast about the lab here – and it is already working with Digital Federal Credit Union, BECU, and the NASA credit union, among other financial institutions (including some megabanks). It has a good credit union pedigree.

The Coalesce focus is on automating monotonous, rote work, particularly around handling incoming member emails (70% it turns out can be answered by machines) and also auto loan applications. Hunting for fraud is another, promising avenue for AI.  AI, it turns out, is good doing these jobs faster and cheaper than people.

Are the machines taking over? Greg Woolf, the Coalesce founder and CEO, laughed at that.  For good reason. The Coalesce version of AI is built around input from people who also are in charge.

Put away those Matrix fears and come for a ride into tomorrow where machines do a lot of the work people honestly don’t want to do and the machines are good at it.

Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!

It’s the Credit Union podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the twelfth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more. Today’s topic is talking about the real credit union mission.

This week, Robert sat down with Bill Bynum, CEO of Hope CU.

Hope. That one word powerfully sums up the mission of Hope Credit Union, a Mississippi delta based community development credit union with more than $280 million in assets.  And Hope is bringing financial hope to people across the deep south who may not have had a lot of that.

How does Hope do this and stay solvent? Listen up to what Bill Bynum, Hope’s CEO, has to say on that, as well as his provocative views about the real mission of credit unions in today’s America, the CFPB, and a lot more.

Note: there is a bit of ambient noise in this recording. But it does not hinder listening or comprehension. A small annoyance at worst.

Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!

It’s the CU 2.0 podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the eleventh in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more. Today’s topic is credit union digital presence.

This week, Robert sat down with  Jay Murray, CEO of Vizo.

Think corporate credit unions died? Think again. Jay Murray, CEO of Vizo, a large corporate that’s the product of a merger between Mid Atlantic and First Carolina, is bullish on the future of corporate credit unions and he thinks they just may be essential to the survival of many thousands of small credit unions.

He’s probably right.

But Jay has more to say.  He talks about Vizo’s push into offering cooperative back office technology solutions, at affordable rates, to hundreds of small credit unions.  He’s attacking the hegemony of for-profit vendors and that just may be a very cool thing.

Murray also has profound thoughts about the importance of cooperatives cooperating with other cooperatives, for mutual benefit. That means looking for ways to work with, say, rural electric cooperatives, food cooperatives, and just about every other kind of cooperative. What cooperatives are you working with?

This is a good podcast with plenty of insights into what tomorrow might look like for small credit unions and it may be more cheerful than you think.  Are small credit unions dead men walking? Murray says no way and he tells why he is optimistic.

Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!

It’s the Credit Union podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the tenth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more. Today’s topic is credit union digital presence.

This week, Robert sat down with Amy McGraw, Tropical Financial and spoke about the Student Loan Crisis.

Here’s a terrifying number: Total outstanding student loan debt is $1.5 trillion. The average student leaves college owing north of $28,000. Talk about dream crushing. Talking about downscaling.

Enter ChangEd. It’s an app that says it can help graduates pay off debts faster by harnessing their pocket change. Automatically. Pretty much painlessly. Tropical Financial, the Florida credit union, is in a pilot program to show the power of pocket change. That’s what Tropical Financial vice president Amy McGraw tells us about in this podcast. Student loans already are impacting the ability of many credit unions to make loans to debt-burdened would be borrowers. That can put home purchases on hold. Ditto cars. So finding a way out is critical. ChangEd just may be the path.

At Tropical Financial, the hope is that by helping student loan holders pay off their debts faster, and with little pain, the credit union will gain visibility with Millennials in particular.

But, mainly, it’s also just about walking the credit union talk which means helping members live better financial lives.

Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!

It’s the CU 2.0 podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the ninth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more. Today’s topic is credit union digital presence.

This week, Robert sat down with  Tanan Miles, Vice President of ENT Credit Union.

Do you dream of being in control of your credit union’s digital presence?

Stop dreaming, start doing. Find out how in this podcast as Ent vice president Tanan Miles explains how the Colorado institution has full control of the UI of its digital presence.

How cool is that when the most important branch for most credit unions is online and mobile access?

Ent, by the way, has compelling numbers to show the emerging dominance of mobile. 34% of its members are mobile exclusive – that is their only way to access the institution. And 75% of the online sessions now are mobile.

Which means you want to start controlling your institution’s digital presence.

Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!

It’s the CU 2.0 podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the eigth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more.

This week, Robert sat down with Scott Budde of Main Harvest. It has taken some years but finally, Maine Harvest may be in the final lap before gaining an official credit union charter.  That’s because it’s met its fundraising goal, $2.4 million, with last monies ponied up by the Maine Credit Union League and what’s remarkable is that just about the whole credit union movement in the state has supported the formation of this novel credit union.

Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!

It’s the CU 2.0 podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the seventh in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more.

This week, Robert sat down with Vasilios Roussos, executive director of the DCU Fintech Innovation Center in Boston.

The what?  You’re right: this is a major departure for a credit union and in this podcast you’ll find out why DCU launched a fintech incubator, how this is very cool for the industry and what other credit unions can do to achieve similar outcomes.

How can credit unions level the technology playing field with megabanks and giant fintechs? DCU may well be showing the way in Boston. Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!

It’s the CU 2.0 podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the sixth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more.

This week, Robert sat down with Trudy Soucoup, a member of the board of directors at Washington State Employees Credit Union, a top 100 institution with about $2.8 billion in assets. Trudy’s day job is as CEO of Homes First!, a nonprofit focused on low-income housing in Washington. The focus of this podcast: what’s it like to be a board member in 2018, a time of enormous flux for most credit unions.

Hint: it’s a lot of work.

You’ll hear about that and also a slightly embarrassing introduction to MRDC in this podcast. Board members are critical to the success of credit unions. But rarely are they heard from. So listen up.

One more thing: tune into the last bit of this podcast to learn about special sponsorship opportunities.  You’ll want to hear about this. Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!

It’s the CU 2.0 podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the fifth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more.

This week, Robert sat down with Geoff Caras, COO of CU 2.0 and a tech executive whose resume sports stints as CTO at leading credit unions. He also offers credit unions a fractional CTO service and, for many buying fractional talent is a smart way to bring in strong talent at prices that work even for modest institutions. It’s a trend that just may catch on at a lot of credit unions. Click the photo below to listen now!

Check out other podcasts in the series here!

It’s the CU 2.0 podcast! CU 2.0 is excited to bring you the fourth in a series of podcasts from Robert McGarvey. Welcome to the CU 2.0 Podcast, regular interviews with credit union leaders, thinkers, movers, shakers and more.

This week, Robert sat down with Amy Downs, CEO of Allegiance Credit Union in Oklahoma. This is a very special episode. The conversation with Amy opens with her remembrance of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal office building in Oklahoma. Many of her co-workers lost their lives that day; some 168 people died that day. Amy survived but was hospitalized. She also talks about her determination to remake Allegiance to be a thriving 21st-century institution, a credit union that honors and remembers its past but also is focused on staying relevant.

Check out other podcasts in the series here!