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This podcast explores contemporary, critical thinking and issues impacting the nation's credit unions. What do they need to be doing to not just survive but prosper?
493 Episodes
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Send a text Are you still relying on product based rewards for members? Meet the new tool on the block: relationship building. A trigger is that interchange rates are under attack and, for many financial institutions, it’s been interchange that funded the rewards programs. So what’s the new approach? On the show is Beth McCoy, CEO of CORA Loyalty, who provides a roadmap for building member relationships that benefit both the member and the institution. CORA Loyalty explains wha...
Send a text Just when I thought credit card rewards initiatives were on the chopping block, here comes David Metz and Priizeout with an innovative twist on credit card rewards and it’s one that already is winning credit union applause. Proof is that also on the show is Sarah Vasey, Chief Operating Officer at Michigan-based United Financial Credit Union, an institution with around $350 million in assets. Sarah herself is a credit card rewards beneficiary and she tells what she re...
Send a text Do credit unions have a future? And if so what? Meet Lamont Black, a Filene Fellow - Credit Union of the Future. Spoiler alert: Black is optimistic about the future of credit unions. A finance professor at DePaul University, Black also is a busy writer, speaker, consultant who focuses on innovative technologies including AI and Bitcoin and, nowadays, especially Stablecoin. In the show Black is articulate in explaining why AI matters to credit unions and he also offer...
Send a text Only about one third of your members feel understood by you - that’s the harsh fact that emerges from a member experience survey conducted by the Harris Poll and sponsored by White Clay, a fintech that says it helps banks and credit unions enhance customer relationships and profitability. On the show today is Mac Thompson, CEO and founder of White Clay, to tell why members feel misunderstood and also to explain why he says credit unions should get busy implementing human-centere...
Send a text Today Andrea Argueta is director of financial institution advisory at Glia, a company that focuses on providing credit unions and banks digital customer service tools and nowadays that means AI. So this show’s focus is on the practical suite of tools Glia has working in some 400 credit unions, making Glia very probably the largest provider of AI tools to credit unions. Importantly, too, Argueta knows credit unions. That’s because before coming to Glia she served as COO at ...
Send a text Fraud is up, a lot, at credit unions, according to the Alloy 2026 State of Fraud Report, says Sara Seguin, a principal adviser at Alloy. Sara is a past CU 2.0 Podcast guest - link to that show is in the show notes. She’s on the show now to report that credit unions say they have experienced a 72% increase in fraud events, more than any other segment. Worse, a lot of fraud now involves synthetic identities - i.e., manufactured people - and a long con that may take ...
Send a text What a ride Steve O’Donnell has had at One Nevada Credit Union, a $1.5 billion institution where he started as a teller some 22 years ago and in August 2025 he was promoted to CEO. This podcast is about his journey getting into the top job - and also what he sees as some of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for him and One Nevada. A name you will hear often in this show is “Paul,” that’s Paul Parrish, the prior CEO at One Nevada and a current member of the instit...
Send a text Safe Harbor, the Golden CO based cannabis banking pioneer, is alive and growing and that’s the message of today’s guest Terry Mendez, the recently installed CEO. Mendez took over the seat that had been occupied by Sundie Seefried, onetime ceo of Partner Colorado Credit Union who left that post to helm Safe Harbor. Sundie, by the way, was the guest in CU 2.0 Podcast #139 which posted 4+ years ago, link in the show notes. A lot had happened in those intervening years...
Send a text The Credit Union Generation Barrier. On the show today is Melissa Krut, VP of Success at Sogolytics, a Herndon Virginia based firm that focuses on data driven analytics that answer questions such as how satisfied are a credit union’s employees, how satisfied are members, and more. Krut is here to discuss Sogolytics data driven approach and also to elaborate on a recent Sogolytics report that documents the disconnect between younger Millennials and Gen Z and credit unions. Th...
Send a text Rik Reitmaier is CIO at Tennessee based Ascend Federal Credit Union, with $4.4 billion in assets and 245,000. That puts Ascend in the nation’s top 100 credit unions. And Reitmaier is on the show to talk about the wide range of issues, worries and concerns that are on his mind. AI of course is high on that list and Reitmaier explains both Ascend’s position on AI today and why he thinks it’s the right course. Hint: many Ascend employees are already using Copilot. There...
Send a text I fancy myself something of a minor expert on Medicare and often have advised friends who are approaching 65 about their best options. Until a man I know approached me and asked for my advice. He added he was dually qualified for Medicare and Medicaid and he thought he probably qualified for food benefits, too. Huh? I had no idea what he was talking about and had to admit to him I was useless in this case. Today I advised him to find a credit union he could j...
Send a text Mark Ritter, CEO of Member Business Financial Services, a Pennsylvania based CUSO, estimates that about 800 US credit unions do member business lending, meaning that perhaps 3700 don’t. Many, many more could. That is spelled out in HR 1151, the law that lets credit unions serve more than one employer group. Passage of that law is detailed in CU 2.0 Podcast Episode 51 with Marc Schaefer, then the CEO of Truliant CU. If credit unions can make small business loans, wh...
Send a text It’s typically the first in depth contact a non member has with a credit union and that non member, increasingly, is seeking to open a new account online. Good luck with that. The brutal fact is that digital account opening tools at most credit unions are inadequate - and an upshot is a stampede of would-be members who simply abandon the process. That’s why today’s show features Philip Paul, CEO of Cotribute, a developer of digital member onboarding tools, and Kathy Richards...
Send a text Fact: youth banking is the entry ramp into a credit union. Fact 2: Credit unions, most of them, will admit that youth banking is not exactly their strongest suit. Enter Cardinal Credit Union, a Mentor OH based institution with assets around $335 million, where CEO Chistine Blake saysthey are winning big in attracting youth to get credit union accounts by doing a lot of innovative thinking and mixing in fun activities. Blake, by the way, is a past podcast guest. In epi...
Send a text Go back to when I started to report on credit unions and there were over 8000 credit unions. Now there are 4370. In 2020 there were 5099 credit unions. Just in five years the count is down by 700+. The math going forward is gloomy. That’s why I smiled when I saw Jason Stverak’s CU Insight piece on Why small credit unions matter and how we can help them thrive. Jason is chief advocacy officer at DCUC, the Defense Credit Union Council and is a past p...
Send a text Big data vs. AI. Is this a war inside the walls of credit unions or can the two flourish in harmony? On the show are Anne Legg, founder and CEO of Thrive 3.0, where the mantra is leveraging data to better members’ lives, and Saroop Bharwani, co-founder and CEO of Senso, where he has been bringing AI to credit unions for several years. What you’ll hear in this episode is that indeed big data and AI can - should - co-exist for optimal results in credit unions. Along the way ...
Send a text “Prepare: AI is the new CU crisis super villain.” That’s the title of a recent CUInsight story authored by Casey Boggs, founder of Reputation US, an d of course we had to get him on this podcast. Understand, I am a strong supporter of AI in general and AI in particular inside credit unions. This is a life and death matter. Yet there is a possible downside to AI and we already know that the main AI tools have played substantial roles in teen suicides, in creating fa...
Send a text Exactly what is Room (39)a? There’s one at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center but today we are talking about the Room (39)a at CFCU, Community Financial Credit Union in Michigan, where past CU 2.0 Podcast guest Tansley Stearns serves as CEO and she has launched this Room (39)a as a CUSO that will offer subscriptions to its research. As for what it does, CFCU’s Room (39)a describes itself this way: “a place where possibility and the unexpected collide. We blend the precision of resear...
Send a text Three years ago Tropical Financial Credit Union, a $1 billion south Florida institution, signed on as a sponsor of the Florida Panthers and magic happened because the Panthers - in the National Hockey League - won the Stanley Cup in 2024 and won again in 2025. That’s the equivalent of winning the World Series in baseball or the Super Bowl in football and, definitely, the Panthers now are the darlings of south Florida because everybody loves a winner. On the show is Marylen Yiris...
Send a text Back on the show today after a hiatus is Kirk Kordeleski, onetime CEO of Bethpage Federal Credit Union and now a partner in Parc Street Partners where he focuses on credit union executive retirement plans. Kordeleski has been on the show many times but he always is welcomed back because he has deep insight into what it’s like to be a credit union CEO and also into how to compensate those CEOs appropriately. Here’s a link to the Kordeleski Archives. What brings Kordeleski...
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