Are You Holding Your Credit Union Back? A Directors’ Guide to Stepping Up Your Game & Staying Relevant

May Blog - Asking Some Harder Questions

Are You Holding Your Credit Union Back? A Directors’ Guide to Stepping Up Your Game & Staying Relevant

Your job as a board member is to push forward, not to hold back. Credit union board members may not always have a good sense of how their behavior impacts the credit union itself, often in extremely negative ways. Lack of awareness of the industry and of self can be at play here. Even with the best of intentions, sometimes boards are a drag on the organization without knowing it, creating the environment for catastrophic results.

By Kevin Smith

I know … I know. I’m coming out of the gates here with a negative perspective. I tried to put a positive spin on this but I decided that I didn’t want to beat around the bush on this.

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Sunday Reading - Year of the Fire Horse

Year of the Fire Horse Lunar New Year celebrations kick off tomorrow, ushering in the Year of the Fire Horse in the Chinese zodiac. The 15-day festivities, observed by billions worldwide, start with the new moon and end with the Lantern Festival. China anticipates a record 9.5 billion trips during the 40-day travel rush around the holiday, the world’s largest annual human migration. The horse is the seventh animal in the 12-year zodiac cycle and symbolizes energy, independence, and ambition. Those born in horse years are seen as dynamic, courageous, and charismatic. Many see the Year of the Fire Horse as a time to tak...

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The NCOFCU Podcast: Clear Insight. No Jargon.

Every week, we cover the latest trends and developments within the credit union industry. At NCOFCU, we are dedicated to providing you with insightful discussions that cut through the clutter. Our podcast features expert opinions, in-depth analyses, and an exploration of the challenges and opportunities that credit unions, directors, and staff face today. Join us as we navigate the evolving industry and empower associations with the knowledge they need to thrive. https://ceohp.podbean.com/ ================================================= Remember, you're not alone with NCOFCU.org Join/Upgrade Check out some of NCOFCU's additional features: First Responder Credit Union Academy Financial Literacy Podcasts YouTube Mini's Blog Job Board

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Why First Responder Credit Unions Are Built to Adopt Blockchain Faster

For years, blockchain in financial services lived mostly in the world of experimentation—proofs of concept, pilot programs, and innovation labs that rarely touched day-to-day operations. That era is ending. Today, blockchain adoption is moving from experimentation to scale. Across payments, capital markets, and banking infrastructure, financial institutions are beginning to operate on new rails—powered by tokenized money, programmable assets, and always-on settlement models. For credit unions serving first responders, this shift presents not just a technology opportunity, but a strategic one. Blockchain Is Becoming Core Infrastructure The most important change isn’t the technology itself—it’s how it’s being used. Blockchain is no longer about testing what might work. It’s increasingly being deployed as infrastructure to solve long-standing problems in financial services, including slow settlement, trapped liquidity, manual reconciliation, and limited operating hours. Cr...

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No New Pennies, New Rules: Treasury Sets Guidance For Cash Transactions

WASHINGTON—For credit unions and their members, the penny’s long goodbye is no longer theoretical—it’s operational. Just before Christmas the U.S. Treasury quietly released a detailed set of Penny Production Cessation FAQs, confirming that the federal government has stopped manufacturing new pennies and laying out how businesses, financial institutions, and consumers should prepare as the coin gradually slips out of everyday use. The move reflects a basic math problem: It now costs 3.69 cents to produce a single penny, nearly triple its cost a decade ago. Treasury estimates halting production will save taxpayers $56 million annually, while acknowledging that the coin’s purchasing power—and relevance—has steadily eroded in an economy dominated by electronic payments. What Changes At The Register—And What Doesn’t Despite the halt in production, pennies are not being eliminated. Roughly 114 billion pennies remain in circulation, and the Federal Reserve will continue recirculati...

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Economic and Industry Issues

Weekly News Summary - July 30, 2020 Press Release For Immediate Release Weekly News Summary Hello NCOFCU Members, Here are some things that were in the news last week. Please share these articles with your Supervisory Committee and Board of Directors. If you missed previous editions of the weekly news, summaries of those can be viewed at our archive . Have a great week! Mike Richards, CPA The Callahan Credit Union A...

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Health Coverage Tailored for You! Allstate Health Solutions

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Sunday Reading - Where Beatniks Come From

Where Beatniks Come From An introduction to the Beat Generation The Beat Generation was an American literary movement that rose to prominence in the 1950s. A loosely affiliated collection of poets, novelists, playwrights, publishers, and other artists reacted to what they considered an anti-intellectual and homogeneous social order following World War II. The writing of the Beat Generation used experimental forms, surreal imagery, and vernacular language, and emphasized the importance of " spontaneous prose " to mimic the improvisation of jazz. Although the Beats praised canonical poets like William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, and Walt Whitman, much of their work sought to rebel against literary tradition. The Beats' radical politics and nonconformity influenced several subsequent countercultural ...

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7 Things to Do (And Avoid) with SMS/Text in Credit Union Marketing

By not using SMS text messaging for marketing, you are missing a channel with a 98% open rate and a rapid response rate. Consumers love the convenience and are open to receiving personalized and relevant texts from their bank and credit union. Naturally there are some caveats to be aware of. Here are seven pointers. Are you content to have your customers take 90 minutes to respond back to a communication you’ve sent, or would 90 seconds be better? That’s the difference in average response times between email and SMS text. Then there is the open rate: SMS texts have high open rates — up to 98%, according to Gartner and 82% by another source. The average open rate of email is around 20%. If you send an email with a link to a survey to find out what a consumer thinks about the virtual meeting with a lending officer they just had, it may linger in the consumers’ inbox for days, at which point the experience is no longer top-of-mind or the consumer decides to simply delete the ...

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Next Gen of Payments Could Leave ACH System Behind, Bank CEO Cautions

NEW YORK–The next generation of payments could leave the Automated Clearing House (ACH) system behind as stablecoins and tokenized deposits move into the banking core, according to one bank CEO. Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long said during a discussion with TheStreet Roundtable host Scott Melker that the “tokenized dollars are going to be big. Yes, there’s a distinction between tokenized bank deposits and stablecoins. Yes, right now, all the activity is in stablecoins, but we’re going to link the two in a safe and sound way.” During the discussion, Long cited Citi’s upgraded forecast for the sector, which now projects between $3 trillion and $4 trillion in stablecoins outstanding by 2030, according to Yahoo Finance, which noted Long believes even that range is far too conservative. “Those numbers are still too low,” she said. “I think they’re way too low.” According to Long, the innovation lies in embedding blockchain technology directly into the banking infrastructure rath...

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TruStage To Launch TSDA, Bringing Stablecoin Infrastructure To Community FIs

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