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Credit Union Times
MAY 22, 2019 | VOL. 30 | NO. 17 | 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;
EMPLOYEE BENEFITS
Fighting Financial Stress
A good financial wellness pro
gram should include components that are relevant to each
generation’s particular points of
pain, with solutions delivered in
a comfortably accessed format.
Any number of financial pressures are weighing down employees these days, posing a troublesome burden across age groups
jobs and income categories.
If it’s not student loan debt for
millennials (and their elders and
those behind them, too) that’s
creating problems, it’s the juggling by Gen Xers to help mom
and dad out, save for Junior’s
college, mortgage and car loan,
and paying for the emergency
dental bill. Meanwhile, many
baby boomers think they’ll never
retire, given the shortfall in their
retirement savings.
Employees are paying the pri e
in elevated stress and employers
are sharing the pain. Financially
stressed employees miss an aver
age of 4. 4 more workdays – and far
more when they are at work but
disengaged ( 12. 5) – than those
without financial stress. Employers pay a absenteeism and
presenteeism rates climb, and
he bottom line is hit with rising
health care costs since the financially stressed tend to neglect their
g od eating and health habits.
Som 83% of U.S. employers
hese days have instituted programs to address the problem,
an improvement from just a few
y ars ago, when just 20% of em
ployers offered them in Y15
FOCUSREPORT:
CUSOs
What do all CUSOs have in common? They
began with an idea for how CUs can
achieve more by working together. Learn
about the talented innovators behind three
new CUSOs in this Focus Report. Y6
Small Business
Security
Help SMB
members prevent
breaches. Y14
Failing Can Be
a Good Thing
Use it to
enhance a CU
partnership. Y10
n an era when small credit
unions are frequently left in
the technological dust on a
consumer battlefield that is
rapidly moving online, one CUSO
is making a huge bet that strength
in numbers will move many credit
unions to the front of the competi-
tive pack.
That huge bet is in the form of
Lumin Digital, which St. Peters-
burg, Fla.-based PSCU launched
about a year ago and which op-
erates a cloud-based platform
that integrates mobile and online
banking platforms, card services,
data analytics and call center sup-
port, among other things. The idea
is to provide credit unions with
more advanced technology that
makes their digital experiences as
competitive and as sophisticated
as what many big banks provide
— and meets the expectations of
consumers who increasingly pri-
oritize online and mobile offer-
ings when they choose financial
institutions.
According to PSCU, the plat-
form provides card controls, per-
sonal dashboards, mobile and
desktop bill pay, remote deposit
capture, security controls, au-
tomatic updates and the ability
to add custom desktop, mobile
web and app features. Call cen-
ter support is also part of the
package, as are data analytics,
which PSCU said could
PSCU’s Tech Venture With Lumin Digital
Y16
MOBILE BANKING
TINA OREM
torem@cutimes.com
ichigan State Uni-
versity Federal
Credit Union is ex-
perimenting with
small-dollar loans to help a group
of people often under high stress
and in unstable conditions: Survi-
vors of domestic violence.
For the past five years, the
East Lansing, Mich.-based credit union ($4.2 billion in assets,
269,344 members) has worked
with a network of local domestic
abuse shelters and a Michigan
State researcher to find the right
mix of parameters that will allow it
to make loans that will help these
women – and a few men – regain
their independence and enhance
their financial power.
“Their dedication is just amazing,” said Katie
Gaynor, content
and media manager for the Filene
Research Institute,
which has been
an advisor on the
project since it was
conceived five years ago and has
been publishing reports on its
progress. Y17
JIM DUPLESSIS
jduplessis@cutimes.com
Road to
Aiding
Abuse
Survivors
Rocky
LENDING
Filene