Blog

One of the pandemic’s many casualties was the joint CUNA/World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) conference, which had been scheduled for July in Los Angeles. Recently WOCCU released its annual Statistical Report, which presumably would have been cause for celebration at the live event. And there is plenty to celebrate, with global membership growth of 17 million (over 6%) in 2019 alone.

The regulatory landscape for US financial institutions is notoriously complex, a complicated web of overlapping federal agencies and state authorities. The need to comply with so many rule makers is frequently cited as a reason the US lags in financial innovation. Sometimes it takes a bold, borderline crazy move to jumpstart the process. And we may have just seen one in- of all places- Wyoming.

Credit unions - and innovation - don’t exist in a vacuum. There’s plenty to be learned from experiences beyond financial services, as well as the broader context in which we all operate. That’s one of the principles behind BIG’s weekly Digital Town Hall Meetings, at which credit union leaders share best practices and recent developments. There are inevitably valuable takeaways from distant colleagues confronting similar issues and sparks of inspiration prompted by observations on related- as...

Budget season is among the year’s most stressful and aggravating times under the best of circumstances. Layer on our current uncertainty regarding the economy, public health and election outcomes and the challenge begins to feel insurmountable. With most credit unions entering their peak of 2021 planning, leaders may be reasonably questioning the value of an exercise seemingly less tethered to reality than usual. Let’s consider how to get the most from a necessary process in these difficult ti...

The always intriguing Finovate conference followed the rest of society into the digital sphere last week, adapting its tried-and true model of seven-minute demos of cutting edge financial technology to a new virtual format. While the buzz of a packed auditorium devouring live demos was missing, the ideas being pitched were as compelling as ever.

Of all the havoc the coronavirus has wreaked on daily life, disruptions to payments behavior hardly tops the average consumer’s list. Nonetheless these impacts are real, and they matter quite a bit to leaders of credit unions and other financial services firms. The Federal Reserve has performed a wealth of valuable research recently in this area- last week’s BIGCast interview with the Atlanta Fed’s Claire Greene delves into many of these reports. Here’s a brief overview of a few surprising t...

A few weeks back John and Kevin initiated a spirited debate over the multiple tradeoffs baked into a credit union’s app strategy- user friendliness, functionality, ease of ongoing updates, etc. Check out our prior post for the first half of this conversation, particularly on whether it’s best to offer a single all-inclusive app addressing every banking need, or a compact ”everyday” app along with a series of others suited for less frequent needs like mortgage applications.

Last month I wrote about how credit unions’ stagnant market share of 7% of US consumer deposits should not be acceptable to industry leaders. Our member growth stats have been decent, but what really matters at the end of the day is Primary Financial Institution (PFI) status- the goal is for a bank or credit union to establish itself as the centerpiece of daily financial life, the first place a consumer turns when financial help is needed.

The Federal Reserve stirred the pot in 2018 when it requested comments on its offering a real-time payments network, since branded as FedNOW.

Financial technology can be complicated stuff- and anyone who claims there are easy answers to the challenges facing credit unions probably hasn’t analyzed the issues closely enough.