Firefighter Credit Union Newsroom

Prescott Ford is the Managing Director of the Office of Regulatory Affairs at First Empire Securities, Inc., and formerly served as a National Bank Examiner with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in the regulatory/compliance examination sector, Prescott keeps clients in step with a constantly changing regulatory landscape. A valuable resource for banks and credit unions, he frequently authors regulatory updates, participates at industry conferences, and conducts educational webinars and seminars on the subjects of interest rate, liquidity and investment portfolio risk management. In addition to seminars hosted by First Empire, Prescott has addressed industry groups, such as the Southern California Credit Union Association and the Credit Union Executives Society. He also recently authored the Credit Union Times article “Management Manages, Not the Examiner.” Prescott received a Bachelors of Science in Business Administ...

  Cheer Up and Change: The Demographic Mandate At a conference I recently attended Monday morning started off with a great session by demographer and futurist Ken Gronbach, who laid out his predictions on where we’re going and what we can expect as demographics change. I was pleasantly surprised that the future isn’t sounding as bleak as the news might have you believe.  Gronbach offered lots of predictions for where our society and our world is headed. His predictions were given with a purpose: To help associations build their vision and plan for the future. As Gronbach stressed, "Wait and see is not a plan." I’ve decided to arrange this recap into a list of my takeaways rather than a narrative recap. I hope you get as much out of this information as I did! Things to Expect: Big Changes in Retail : Gronbach explained that Generation Y, who are now ages 10-29, are a generation that shops primarily online. We can expect to see a shift in retail, especially away from the bi...

I was asked to comment on this by a credit union publication. My feelings were that the credit union was doing what it should, educating the members as to how dealer financing works. An educated member will make a much better decision when considering purchasing a vehicle in the future. What do you think? Grant Sheehan August 4, 2014 They say never bite the hand that feeds you. But that seems to be what Space Coast Credit Union did with an auto lending campaign attacking interest rate markups charged by dealerships. The credit union had to do a big U-turn after the auto industry protested, with some car dealers decrying the marketing initiative as a smear campaign.  Few consumers are aware of “rate markups.” A rate markup (sometimes referred to as “buy-ups” or “dealer reserves”) occurs when a car buyer arranges for bank or credit union financing at the dealership, and the rate they get is marked up. It is a fairly common practice, encouraged by the indirect lending polici...

By Wayne Rash   |  Posted 2014-06-16 NEWS ANALYSIS: A new report shows up to 70 percent of U.S. credit cards will have EMV chips by 2015. But merchants must convert POS terminals and train staff to use them. The good news for companies that accept credit cards is that most banks will be issuing credit cards with EMV chips well before the coming liability shift in October 2015. The bad news is that merchants that don't accept EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) chips will have to absorb the cost of fraudulent transactions due to counterfeit credit cards. Previously, banks had absorbed those costs. EMV chips are microprocessors embedded in cards that make counterfeiting the cards virtually impossible. That means that companies that accept credit cards at point-of-sale (POS) terminals will have to either buy new terminals or they'll have to enable the EMV chip readers on the terminals they already have. The surprising news is that the majority of card issuers will use ch...