Trusted News for Credit Union Leaders
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