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Credit Union Times

APRIL 17, 2019 | VOL. 30 | NO. 12 | CUTIMES.COM

Must Reads

INVESTMENTS

‘Pensionize’ 401(k)s and IRAs In a world of defined contributions, American workers have three challenges – inadequate savings, leakage (or loans/early withdrawals) tied to their retirement accounts and the need for retirement income. Plus, just half of all DC plans offer a way for investors to transform balances into periodic retirement income, with only one in five offering guaranteed lifetime payouts.

This situation prompted Steve Vernon of the Stanford Center on Longevity, Wade Pfau of The American College of Financial Services and researcher Joe Tomlinson to explore and devise solutions to “pensionize” retirement plans. Their work, first published last year and then updated this year, finds that only one-third of workers contact financial advisors, and most lack the necessary skills to convert savings into retirement income and typically have short planning horizons.

But research from the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL) and Society of Actuaries (SOA) has found a “straightforward retirement strategy,” according to the three authors. “Choosing a specific solution that will help workers generate retirement income requires them to make informed tradeoffs between potentially competing goals,” they explained, such as “maximizing lifetime income; providing access to savings (liquidity); planning for bequests;

CYBERSECURITY

CU Call Centers Seek Balance Credit union contact center em ployees, who are now handling more than calls, are trying to trike a balance between acting as crime scene investigators checking identities and helpful agents attempting to sustain or improve the member experience.

This second and final installment in a two-part article series looks at call center threats, and possible solutions available through digital identification and bot mitigation.

Two CUSOs that recognize how credit unions are strai ing to find the right security-experience equilibrium – the Columbus, Ohio-based Sherpa Technologies, aimed at simplifying digital transformation solutions, and Denver, Colo.-based CULedger, focused on delivering a premier network of one-to-one financial exchanges – reached a Letter of Understanding (LOU) to collaborate with Sherpa’s veri fication partner, ID-Pal.

“We partnered with ID-Pal because it is a compliant, end-to-end solution that offers a comprehensive and se mless verification and member experience. Additionally, we chose to become an investor in CULedger due to its promise to deliver novative digital experiences and open platforms to the credit union industry,” Keith Riddle, president/CEO of Sherpa Technologies (which is wholly-owned and funded by the $3.5 billion, Columbus, Ohio-based Y16

Employee benefits are complex programs for any credit union HR executive to manage, but what happens to them after a merger? Learn best practices for benefits program integration post-acquisition in this Focus Report. Y6 FOCUSREPORT: HR, RECRUITMENT

& BENEFITS

Employee Financial Wellness Incorporate it into your CU’s benefits plan. Y11

Preventing

Workplace Harassment

Is your CU’s policy
up to date? Y8
o compete for new talent
in today’s ultra-tight la-
bor market, credit union
executives may want to
consider dropping college degree
requirements for new jobs. There
are professionals who believe this
can expand the pool of qualified
candidates who have the experi-
ence or the equivalent in education
in lieu of a collegiate diploma.

Some HR experts recommended the degree requirement should be nixed for all jobs, including executive positions, while other HR executives said it’s OK to forgo the bachelor’s requirement or make it optional, but only for some jobs.

To be sure, among several big-
name corporations and finan-
cial institutions, the needle has
moved, if not jumped, in favor of
hiring talented employees who
have the proven professional
experience, but lack an associ-
ate’s or bachelor’s degree. What’s
more, some credit unions and
industry organizations such as
Extensia and PSCU have been
ahead of the curve when it comes
to attracting qualified employees
who, instead of having a college
degree, were hired based on their
successful work background and
technical certifications or profes-
sional designations.
“At Extensia, we never really
imposed a degree requirement
on our candidates,” said
Dropping Degrees to Win Talent

PETER STROZNIAK pstrozniak@cutimes.com

Y17

HIRING PRACTICES

CUs Tackle
Anti-
Harassment
Policies
TINA OREM
torem@cutimes.com

ecent allegations of sexist, inappropriate behavior by some male attendees at CUNA’s 2019

Governmental Affairs Conference are prompting credit union event organizers across the country to take a hard look at how conference attendees conduct themselves – a move that could set the stage for a wave of new anti-harassment policies and codes of conduct in the industry.

The scrutiny comes in the wake of a now-viral LinkedIn post in which Maps Credit Union Chief Risk Officer Rachel Pross said she witnessed a variety of offensive behaviors from several male GAC attendees, including unwelcomed kissing and touching. Pross also said she was “ repeatedly cut off, spoken over or blatantly dismissed” at a lunch with a male credit union CEO, and at one point during the conference, a male attendee allegedly walked up behind a female attendee and licked the woman’s bare shoulder.

“We’re an industry that boasts a cooperative spirit, diversity and inclusion … but our industry is not immune to bad behavior,” Pross wrote in her post. “In fact, I would argue that our indus- Y18 MANAGEMENT