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Today’s topic: How to Pass the NCUA Tech Audit (Without Losing Your Mind)

The guest is Mike Robins, COO at Dynamic Edge, a company that’s helped many credit unions - particularly ones with assets between $25 million and $400 million - successfully navigate the NCUA Tech Audit which occurs “periodically,” according to the agency.

Hear what’s involved in the audit, how to pass it and - crucially - how to prepare for it.

Robin’s key point: prepare and you won’t lose your mind.

Interesting, too, is that NCUA provides cheat sheets for the Tech Audit on its website. Robins tells where to find them and how to use them.

He also tells if the auditors are in fact following the cheat sheets.

Listen up.

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On today’s show is Paul Dionne, chief strategy officer at Quantum Governance, L3C.

What’s an L3C? Good question: It’s a low profit limited liability company and, in the case of Quantum Governance, that means it “help[s] nonprofits, credit unions, associations and foundations realize the full potential of their missions.”

The company’s work with credit unions revolves around governance - especially issues involving the board and organizational leadership - and strategic planning.

That’s why a key focus of this discussion is a credit union board’s fiduciary responsibility especially in the case of a merger. When a merger is on the table, a board member’s responsibility is to make decisions that are in the best interest of the membership, said Dionne.

What’s that mean? How can a board member go off course?

In the show Dionne, who worked at Filene before joining Quantum Governance, tells the good, the bad and the ugly.

Listen up.

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Is this the twilight of the golden age of credit unions? On the show to discuss exactly that question is Jim Blaine, the now retired longtime CEO of SECU, the second biggest credit union in the country. Blaine may be retired but he still has opinions about credit unions, as evidenced in his blog, SECU - Just Asking!

In this podcast Blaine also digs deep into the question: what exactly is a credit union? We also talk about democracy in credit unions and often the lack thereof.

Recently Blaine has been sparring with his old employer with the flash point being the institution’s new leadership’s desire to move to risk based pricing for loans. Blaine is against that and successfully resisted it in his years as SECU’s CEO.

Blaine, definitely, is opinionated. But he also is - undeniably - a credit union champion. What he says may make you mad - it definitely made various NCUA employees mad. But listen up because Blaine, very clearly, articulates a philosophy about credit unions that he didn’t just spout, he lived in building SECU into a US credit union powerhouse.

Listen up.

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No one has a richer background in credit union journalism than Frank Diekmann. Over the past 35 years he has been co-founder and editor at Credit Union Times, publisher at Credit Union Journal, co-founder at CUToday, and now he is the founder of The CU Daily, a new publication that is the liveliest credit union pub in my opinion.

Nobody has written more published words about credit unions than Diekmann.

Diekmann has opinions.

Longtime listeners probably think I’m opinionated.

I am.

But Direkmann can and does go toe-to-toe with me on a range of topics - credit union mergers, the future of small credit unions, the credit union federal tax exemption, the future of NCUA and lots more. There are even glimpses into the very future of credit unions - if there is one.

This is a lively show and, remember, Diekmann has years of reporting experience that back up the opinions you’ll hear.

Listen up.

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This show started out as an exploration of Jack Henry’s 7th annual Strategy Benchmark Survey where CEOs of credit unions and banks reveal what really matters to them. It’s a data trich survey, there’s a link in the show notes and I say that because the talk with Lee Wetherington – Senior Director of Corporate Strategy at Jack Henry quickly veered into what’s happening in Washington DC and how changes - especially at CFPB - may impact credit unions.

Along the way we discuss how this is an age where data rules, open banking is coming at you ready or not, you probably don’t know your members nearly as well as you think, and small business relationships probably aren’t what you think but they may well be critical to the future of many credit unions.

Does that spicy stew have your taste buds dancing with excitement? It should because this is a show that plunges into the unexpected but it’s stuff you need to know about banking tomorrow.

Listen up.

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Peter Duffy’s message is plain: The pace of mergers will get fatter and it will involve credit unions of all sizes, from the small to the mega institutions. First Tech and DCU may seem an outlier but now there is ENT and Wings and the pace will keep up, says Duffy who now has joined SRM.

Will the chaos and uncertainty in Washington DC slow the merger pace? Duffy thinks not, indeed the pace may quicken.

That’s because, says Duffy, economies of scale are now the Holy Grail of financial institutions. Bigger is a competitive advantage, he says.

He does make one surprise prediction: he believes the number of credit unions deals with banks will decrease. Listen to hear why (and it doesn’t have much to do with ICBA’s caterwauling).

Listen up.

Listen up.

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This show is a proof to me that my insistence on doing podcasts without written questions in hand or a script is the right way.

I agreed to this show - a talk with Michael Crowl, ceo of $4 billion Austin Texas based UFCU - because I’d heard he had been developing an interesting strategic plan.

At many credit unions there are strategic plans but often they aren’t interesting and often, too, nobody pays any attention gto them anyway.

Supposedly UFCU and Crowl, who has been at UFCU for 20 years and has been CEO since September 2022, were different.

Indeed they are.

But pretty quickly we veered off the plan and dove into how this guy had risen to the CEO job at a very big credit union. He grew up in government housing. He worked his way through the University of Houston. Then he went into investment banking, earned a good score and then - he went into teaching math at a high school.

A few years later he happened into a job at UFCU and fell in love with what a credit union is and could be for its members.

In the show I even ask the hardest question to throw at a CEO - when did you decide you wanted to be CEO and how did you get there? And Cowl gives a simple but honest answer.

I ask an even harder question: is this your last job?

It’s a great show - and I had no idea it would turn out this way. But that’s the magic of doing this work this way.

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

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Welcome to CU 2.0 Podcast Greatest Hits #26 and on the podcast is

Kirk Kordeleski, onetime CEO at Bethpage Federal Credit Union, and one of the industry’s most perceptive thinkers. In this show - from November 2022 -- Kordeleski muses on what he calls the five generations of credit union CEOS and he also offers tips on surviving a recession, advice that very well may be timely.